Don't bother with 'mother tongues'

The term 'mother tongue' is so soaked in sentimentality, that it often escapes scrutiny. It suggests an innate, genetic allegiance to a particular language - usually the first one spoken at home, the one coded into lullabies and scoldings. But peel back that emotional varnish and what remains is a concept more sociopolitical fiction, less linguistic fact. So, when anyone waxes eloquent on the 'specialness' of a mother tongue, know that such 'maternal' linkage is - in today's era of locational, societal and linguistic fluidity - anachronistic.

Language isn't umbilical. It's circumstantial. You don't speak Marathi, Malayalam or English because of maternal osmosis. You speak it - or a mixture of all three - because of proximity, social dynamics, schooling, etc. The 3-5-yr-old child is a blank slate soaking in the world, languages (and biases) included. She is likely to pick up the conversational language of, say, her ayah, rather than of her mum. If a Gujarati-speaking mother has a job in Dubai and has enrolled her kid in an English-medium school, the kid's so-called 'mother tongue' might be armed with diphthongs and shaky Gujarati.

'Mother tongue' implies that linguistic identity is permanent and singular - that there is one true language nestled in 'one's soul' while all others are 'foreign' implants. This is romantic bunkum: people outgrow languages, switch them for communicative ease, or lose them entirely in diaspora. The term also smacks of some kind of purity test. Bureaucrats ask for it in forms, ministers extol its virtues. It's really complex-ridden linguistic gatekeeping disguised as heritage preservation. Retire the phrase, not because it's silly but because it's inaccurate. Call it 'comfort language(s)', instead.