What is your mother tongue ?

   Isn't this an interesting question ?
I can assure you it is, although not in the way you are probably thinking. It is worthy of interest because, in itself, it reveals a lot about those who ask it.

Alright, what is wrong with it ? I'll tell you.

Firstly, if you take a closer look at the people surrounding you, I'm quite sure if you pay attention, you'll be able to spot a lot of bilingual people. If you live in a tiny little village where cows are queens and bilingual people do not grow on trees, you can cheat; look at figures of language diversity in India on the Internet. These figures will make you realise that the idea of monolingualism is is starting to become an increasing exception. 

So the idea of a single mother tongue might seem a bit fishy to you now. In fact, statistically, the odds of someone being monolingual are much rarer than those who are bilingual. The question "what is your mother tongue?" should always be plural. Even when you think foreigners are pretty rare in remote villages, you're forgetting what we call "dialects and idoms". One way of finding this out is to ask older people in your surrounding area about the languages they know and practise. If you take the time to find this information out, then you’ll see there are often more languages spoken than just the ‘’native language’’.

And what about those youngsters in the street, doing nothing but hanging around? What about their language ? Can you understand everything they say? If the answer is ‘’no’’ then they may be speaking another language!

That last example is a bit exaggerated. However, it just shows you how far we can go with the idea of language and monolingualism. Any language, regardless, aren’t always obvious and are very precise matters when it comes to understanding them. Depending on its official (national) status, a language can turn into a dialect and a dialect into a language. That is indeed what happened to the French language, where a specific dialect became official. Whereas, others were not to be taught at school and therefore not learnt by new generations. These "dialects", were previously considered by their speakers as languages. This is because these languages were the only way in which these native speaker were able to express themselves. However, over time these dialects have been progressively forgotten. Here we have an example of one of the unknown consequences of the famous French Revolution! Before the Revolution, the French language was unknown to most of the population living on the French territory. This was due to that fact that it was only spoken by ‘upper’ the and ‘middle’ classes. Hence meaning it was a minority language, a dialect one can say!

I can still recall at school, where I was proud of my "pure" French and would look defiant towards those "exceptions", foreigners who had problems with grammar when I didn't. Now, I know I am the exception because I was born in that tiny little village where foreigners are considered alien and are expected to ‘’speak French, because we are in France’’. Many years have passed since I was sat in my school in my tiny village, and since then I have come a long way having learn’t more and experienced new things. Such experiences have made me realise that what I strongly believed only until a few years ago is wrong.

Alright! So we can now agree that the singular in ‘’What IS your mother tongue?’’ Is wrong. Hum... but what about the term "mother" tongue? Its commonly defined as "the first tongue learnt by a person and the way in which one sees the world", very general but that is pretty much it. So again, there can be only one? Even more interesting: does it mean we can't change our mother tongue?
I won't insist on the "mother" aspect, rather, we'll admit the term "parents" otherwise we might focus on a point that is not relevant (the sociological fact that it is mostly mothers who raise and educate children).

So, can someone see the world in another tongue than the one/those he/she has learnt as a child? Or is it too late then to fully acquire another language and proceed to think and dream in it? 

Take for example my current roommate in Warsaw. She is Ukrainian and was raised in Ukraine. She understood Russian but could not speak it. Four years ago she came to Poland to study and has been living at the same dorm since she first arrived. Therefore, she started to improve her Polish, as well as her Russian. This is mainly due to the fact that the vast majority of the population in her dormitory are mostly Russian speakers. As a result, four years later, when I asked her in which language she thinks and dreams, Russian came first, followed by Polish and Ukrainian. In fact, her mind has adapted to allow her to fit into her new environment! As she speaks Ukrainian only with her family and wanted to live in Poland for the rest of her life, her brain has somehow switched to what will be of more use to her in the long run. Isn't it amazing ? 

I gave you that example only to show you that speaking is a complex task and the concept of mother tongue obsolete.
It is my humble opinion that everybody adapts differently to every situation involving language changes and environmental factors. One can simply refuse to learn a new language because of mental barriers, but, humans also have the ability to fully accept the complexity of a language and to learn it to the best of their ability.

What about you? Do you feel monolingual? multilingual? In was language do you think? Is it your mother tongue? What about those people around you? On public transport? At university? At work? Think about it, you’ll soon realise monolingualism is a myth...

Of course, if at some point you disagree with what is stated in this article, feel free to comment about it ! You can also share it with your multilingual friends for them to talk about their experiences!  

If you are interested in the mecanisms of plurilingualism, I would suggest the following reading: Language Wars and Linguistic Politics by Louis-Jean Calvet, it'll provide you with some basics on linguistic ecology.

N.B. As you may have noticed, this article was written by a non-native english speaker, so although is has been corrected, thanks to Anastazja Lucia Masters, parts of it could still seem awkward to you, please forgive us about that !