mother tongue
/ˈmʌð.ə ˌtʌŋ/
"mother-tongue" is a 12-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“mother tongue” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 13
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - The language one first learned; the language one grew up with; one's native language.
Corpus desk
Index EN-mother-tongue · mother tongue · English
mother tongue · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 13 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "M" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mother tongue |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈmʌð.ə ˌtʌŋ/ |
| Letters | 13 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “mother tongue” in English
Rare enough to double-check
mother tongue is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun, transcribed /ˈmʌð.ə ˌtʌŋ/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 4 senses are on record.
No misspelling variants are generated for mother tongue in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English mother tonge, modyr tong, equivalent to mother + tongue. Compare Old Norse móðurtunga (“mother tongue”). The correct English form is mother tongue, spelled M-O-T-H-E-R- -T-O-N-G-U-E.
Definition
- 1The language one first learned; the language one grew up with; one's native language.
- 2The language spoken by one’s ancestors.
- 3The language spoken by one's mother, when it differs from that spoken by one's father.
- 4Informal speech, as opposed to educated language.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how mother tongue appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
His mother tongue is a relatively conservative dialect of Aramaic.
One young Tamil teacher had assimilated the sound-system of English so thoroughly to that of his mother-tongue that none of the Chinese and Malay children understood him.
Etymology
From Middle English mother tonge, modyr tong, equivalent to mother + tongue. Compare Old Norse móðurtunga (“mother tongue”).
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.