father tongue

Noun

father tongue (plural father tongues)

1. A separate language for expressing ideas, as opposed to the vernacular (mother tongue) which is employed for everyday speech.
   • This also implies that the initial dichotomy – the mother tongue as the language of affect as opposed to the father tongue, as the language of cognitive development – needs to be questioned and redefined in the context of diasporic experience, maybe as the language one lives in as opposed to the...2009, Françoise Král, “Language(s) and the Diasporic Subject”, in Critical Identities in Contemporary Anglophone Diasporic Literature, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, →DOI, →ISBN, page 142
   • [Attipate Krishnaswami] Ramanujan has also argued that many Hindu men have both a mother tongue (the everyday language, such as Tamil, spoken by women downstairs, in the back, in the kitchen) and a father tongue (once Sanskrit, more recently English, the literary lingua franca spoken—or at least...2011, Wendy Doniger, “Mother Goose and the Voices of Women”, in The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth (Columbia Classics in Religion), updated edition, New York, N.Y.; Chichester, West...

   Antonyms:

   mother tongue

2. The form of language acquired through education and reading, as opposed to the dialect one grows up speaking; educated or formal language.
   • It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they [books] are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. [...] The other [the language read] is the maturity and experience of...1854 August 9, Henry D[avid] Thoreau, “Reading”, in Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 110
   • In the late medieval period, the rules of proper speech, which I call the "father" tongue, forbade the outright naming of sexual parts or open discussion of lower bodily functions such as sexual intercourse or excretion.1988, Laura Kendrick, “Breaking Verbal Taboos: The Consolations of Fiction III”, in Chaucerian Play: Comedy and Control in the Canterbury Tales, Berkeley; Los Angeles, Calif.; London: University of...

   Antonyms:

   mother tongue

3. A second language that one speaks fluently.
   • Throughout their long history as a minority, Anglo-Indians learned their "father tongue" but were indifferent to their "mother tongue," an indigenous Indian language.1973, Noel P[itts] Gist, Roy Dean Wright, “Styles of Life”, in K. Ishwaran, editor, Marginality and Identity: Anglo-Indians as a Racially Mixed Minority in India (Monographs and Theoretical Studies...
   • English is / my father tongue. / A father tongue is / a foreign language, / therefore English is / a foreign language / not a mother tongue.1986, M[arlene] NourbeSe Philip, “Discourse on the Logic of Language”, in Journal of West Indian Literature, volume 14, Bridgetown, Barbados: Department of English, University of the West Indies...
4. The language spoken by one's father, when it differs from that spoken by one's mother.
   • Questions about respondents' place of birth, their parents' place of birth, nativity, and language use (called "mother tongue" and "father tongue") were added to the Census between 1850 and 1960.2006, Jenifer Bratter, “Census Statistics”, in Yo[landa Kaye] Jackson, editor, Encyclopedia of Multicultural Psychology (A SAGE Reference Publication), Thousand Oaks, Calif.; London: SAGE...
   • Informed by the experience of other parents who had successfully raised their children with more than one language and our own observations, we knew clearly that Léandre and Dominique's mother tongue and father tongue would not have a chance without deliberate 'control' of their linguistic...2008, Xiao-lei Wang, “The Home Years”, in Colin Baker, editor, Growing Up with Three Languages: Birth to Eleven (Parents’ and Teachers’ Guides; no. 11), Bristol; Tonawanda, N.Y.: Multilingual...

   Antonyms:

   mother tongue