Mother tongue

“ An American or English mother, anxious that her child should grow up duly accomplished, gives it a French nurse, and takes care that no English be spoken in its presence; and not all the blood of all the Joneses can save it from talking French first, as if this were indeed its own mother-tongue. ”

“ The language which they used even yet presents a very perfect image of such a race, as not being formed from the corruption of other idioms, but a mother tongue, the most brilliant of the Aryan sisters. In its union of strength with beauty, of pleasing sound with accurate sense, in its power to convey the most subtle distinctions of philosophic thought, or the most radiant images of sensuous loveliness, the gravest enunciations of law, or the tenderest dreams of romance, it was well calculated to be the organ of a people wherein bodily form and immaterial intellect alike culminated. ”

“ No man, however complete a linguist, has more than one real mother tongue, and it is only in one's mother tongue that a lyric sings with all its over-tones. And nevertheless, life offers few purer pleasures than may be found in listening to the half-comprehended songs uttered by alien lips indeed, but from hearts that we know are like our own. ”

“ The child learns its own or mother tongue from the mother; it learns a foreign tongue from a teacher, whose highest ambition is to be a grammarian. Does the child learn better from the mother or from the grammarian? Without doubt, from the mother, according to the mother method. If this is so, must we use the example of the mother or of the grammarian when we are to begin the teaching of a foreign language? Is there any reason why a foreign tongue should be otherwise taught than the mother tongue? ”

“ An infant is taken alive from the arms of its drowned mother, the only waif cast upon the shore from the wreck of a strange vessel; and it learns the tongue of its foster-parents; no outbreak of natural and hereditary speech ever betrays from what land it derived its birth. The child of a father and mother of different race and speech learns the tongue of either, as circumstances and their choice may determine; or it learns both, and is equally at home in them, hardly knowing which to call its native language. ”

“ The mother tongue alone is well pronounced because it was established in the period of childhood; and the adult who learns to speak a new language must bring to it the imperfections characteristic of the foreigner's speech: only children who under the [Pg 316] age of seven years learn several languages at the same time can receive and reproduce all the characteristic mannerisms of accent and pronunciation. ”

“ Those men who happen to be born in a country where the mother tongue is copious and precise, who apply themselves to the study of their mother tongue, who, besides this, learn one or more foreign tongues, &c. ”

“ Can the youth and man again place themselves in the circumstances of the child?
The child is constantly hearing the language spoken, everyone around it is teaching it to speak, everything around it stimulates it to do so. Nearly everything it learns, comes to it through its mother tongue; at play it hears, it speaks. ”

“ If, however, in the use of words, those who address children confine themselves to such words as children already understand, how are they to make progress in that most important of all studies, the knowledge of language? Many a mother keeps back her child, in this way, to a degree that is hardly conceivable, thus doing all in her power to perpetuate in the child an ignorance of its mother tongue. ”

“ The more unconscious processes that reflect imitatively the linguistic environment and that strike out intuitively oral and written vents for interests so intense that they must be told and shared, are what teach us how to command the resources of our mother tongue. These prescriptions and corrections and consciousness of the manifold ways of error are never so peculiarly liable to hinder rather than to help as in early adolescence, when the soul has a new content and a new sense for it, and so abhors and is so incapable of precision and propriety of diction. ”

“ A thorough knowledge of our own mother tongue is an important key to that wide field of usefulness which in this day more especially invites the energies and enterprize of the rising generation than at any former period in the history of the world. By some, the inspiration of God is considered to supersede the necessity of this and every other science. On this erroneous principle some of you may act, and require me to impart to you a knowledge of our language without any mental labour on your part. ”

“ Talking—especially in one’s mother tongue—may serve as a last example. We find it impossible to follow the muscular action of the mouth and tongue in framing every letter or syllable we utter. We have probably spoken for years and years before we became aware that the letter h is a labial sound, and until we have to utter a word which is difficult from its unfamiliarity we speak “trippingly on the tongue” with no attention except to the substance of what we wish to say. ”

“ It has been a drawback in the study of foreign languages that each one is presented to the student disconnected from his mother tongue or any other. On the other hand, the principles of general grammar, in crowning the study of the mother tongue, ought to lay a foundation for foreign languages. ”

“ The mastery of a proper use of the mother tongue is the first and last requisite of sound and extensive mental development. Language is the key to every50thing that pertains to human life. Once get a language and you have the key to manners, civilisation, habits, customs, history, and all the complex and fascinating story of humanity. ”

“ At all stages of learning the mother tongue, the purely verbal exercises are more or less accompanied with the occupation of the mind upon things. If we suppose the child to become acquainted, in the first instance, with a variety of objects, the imparting of the names is a welcome operation, and the mental fusion of each name and thing is rapidly brought about. ”

“ for grammar it might have, but needs it not; being so easy in itself, and so void of those cumbersome differences of cases, genders, moods, and tenses; which, I think, was a piece of the tower of Babylon’s curse, that a man should be put to school to learn his mother tongue. ”

“ As our language forms sentences, that is, as our mother-tongue thinks, so we learn to think. Our brain, our entire thought-status, forms itself by the mother-tongue, and we transmit the same to our children."247 Nature men have only petty coins of speech. ”

“ Tylor also points out how, in the language of children of to-day, we may find a key to the origin of a mass of words for "father, mother, grandmother, aunt, child, breast, toy, doll," etc. From the limited supply of material at the disposal of the early speakers of a language, we can readily understand how the same sound had to serve for the connotation of different ideas; this is why "mama means in one tongue mother, in another father, in a third, uncle; dada in one language father, in a second nurse, in another breast; tata in one language father, in another son," etc. ”

“ But, as we have seen, the study of our mother tongue continued to be generally ignored in English schools for nearly three centuries after Mulcaster and Brinsley had thus called attention to its educational value. ”

“ L—— on the Experience thereof, has asserted, That a Mother who understands not Latin before hand, may yet teach it to her Child; which, if she can, it is not to be doubted but that she may do the same of all the rest; for such a Superficial Knowledge as will serve to enter any one in every of the above-named Sciences, is much easier attain'd than the Latin Tongue; and if a Mother have ever so little more Capacity than her Child, she may easily keep before him, in teaching both him and her self together ”

“ The mother may thus gradually draw out and form its voice for music, just as she teaches it the articulations of the native tongue. The latter process she well understands. She begins with the simplest syllables only, and as she proceeds with those that are more difficult, the exercise is carefully adapted to the gradual progress of the child. Nothing is forced. Every thing is made pleasant and amusing to the little pupil: and the mother at every step is so amply rewarded for her assiduity, as to feel that her labor is but another name for delightful recreation. ”

“ A lonely man, of few but enduring friendships, he had admitted but one love to his life, except the love of his mother. This one love for seven years he had sought to kill. But anything forceful enough to penetrate to the stronghold of Nicol Brinn's soul was indestructible, even by Nicol Brinn himself. ”

“ What teachers of languages in later years would rejoice at hearing such forms as we saw before used in the time of the child’s ‘little language,’ fant or vat or ham for ‘elephant’? But the mother really does rejoice: she laughs and exults when he can use these syllables about his toy-elephant, she throws the cloak of her love over the defects and mistakes in the little one’s imitations of words, she remembers again and again what his strange sounds stand for, and her eager sympathy transforms the first and most difficult steps on the path of language to the merriest game. ”

“ Father, like mother, is a very old word, and goes back, with the cognate terms in Italic, Hellenic, Teutonic, Celtic, Slavonic, and Indo-Aryan speech, to the primitive Indo-European language, and, like mother, it is of uncertain etymology. ”

“ Having wept hopeless tears for weeks in her efforts to remember that "la mère" meant "the mother," and "le père" "the father,"—when one spoke sensible English,—it was almost too much for her to suddenly find herself listening to a child her own age who seemed not only quite familiar with these words, but apparently knew any number of others, and could mix them up with verbs as if they were mere trifles. ”

“ A baby's voice! And now we can hear the soft voice of the mother, singing her child to sleep with an old familiar nursery rhyme. Dear words! Dear memories! Sweet thread of life! When it snaps, the world is dark, and its tenderness and beauty have departed from our souls. The mother's soft voice is like a rill dancing down a hill in the sun's eye. ”

“ How can the child be careful and controlled in speech if the mother has not the power of expressing herself in good English. Language is too powerful a weapon in reaching, compelling and swaying the feelings of others and in winning friends—to be neglected. ”

“ Yet this theory is decidedly partial, for among primitive people, besides mamma, papa, adda, etc., other sounds depending on neither interjections nor imitation, but purely the result of experimentation, get a meaning from the simple relation of mother and child, and so attain at least a place in their vocabulary and surely form one of the grounds for the explanation of the growth of language. It is not maintained that the child first learns the art of imitating sound from his elders, for without doubt he is often the originator, as in the case of mamma and papa, which he has taught them. ”

“ They do not use it consciously till they see that grown-up people on hearing the sound come up and find out what the child wants. And it is the same with the developed forms which are uttered by the child in its joy at getting something to eat, and which are therefore interpreted as the child’s expression for food: am, mam, mammam, or the same words with a final a—that is, really the same groups of sounds which came to stand for ‘mother.’ The determination of a particular form to a particular meaning is always due to the adults, who, however, can subsequently teach it to the child. ”

“ The child’s mother and nurse would be helped to acquire almost insensibly a sound and confident pronunciation. No observant man who has lived at all broadly, meeting and talking with people of diverse culture and tradition, but knows how much our intercourse is cumbered by hesitations about quantity and accent, and petty differences of phrase and idiom, and how greatly intonation and accent may warp and limit our sympathy. ”

“ Why should not the mother, sister, or attendant, when amusing children, freely open the mouths and teach them to pronounce letters and syllables properly, distinctly, articulately, or even entire words, beginning always with the shorter? ”

“ Then let young people have a care, Nor run their heads in marriage snare; A woman's tongue is like the ocean. It ebbs and flows in constant motion; But yet herein a difference grows— Her tongue ne'er ebbs, but always flows. ”

“ The root of the mother-word will stand in the centre, and around her the grove of her children. By influence of taste, diligence, sound sense, and the judicious comparison of different dialects, lexicons will be brought to distinguish what is essential from what is accidental in the signification of words, and to trace the gradual process of transition; while in the derivation of words, and the application of metaphors, we shall behold the invention of the human mind in its act, and more fully understand the logic of ancient figurative language. ”

“ A christian friend, in the last moments of life, when it was supposed all communication with mortals had ceased—spelt, with her fingers, in the dialect of the deaf and dumb, the word—"Mother."
'Tis o'er!—'Tis o'er!
That lip of gentle tone
Doth speak to man no more ”

“ Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. ”