English Dictionary

father tongue

/ˈfɑː.ðə ˌtʌŋ/

noun

A separate language for expressing ideas, as opposed to the vernacular (mother tongue) which is employed for everyday speech.

English is my father tongue.

意味（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 language one works in.

意味（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 that [the language heard]; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak.

意味（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.

意味（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.