Mother Tongue
Qimo Yin · EAP II · Michael Mendonez · 2/16/2026
Understanding Mother Tongue
What is a mother tongue? Generally, I will say it is the language that is most comfortable for someone. Take an example, a child grows up in another area using a different language to his own hometown. If he always misses his hometown and feels a sense of warmth and joy when hearing the words from there, his mother tongue is likely to be the language in his hometown. As a contrast, if he feels the place where he grows up becomes his real home, and is quite comfortable when using the local language, then his mother tongue will be more likely to be the local one. All in all, I think the mother tongue depends on where someone’s heart is, instead of which one he or she uses most frequently or fluently—subjective dependence is more critical.
My Silent Language
As for me, the mother tongue can be more abstract. Even though my Chinese is better than my English, I still feel hard to communicate with others using Chinese. Perhaps this is because I’m more introvert than others. But I believe I’m not someone refusing to share ideas with others—it seems this situation is improved when I do online communication with others and when I combine some strange but interesting inspirations into writings and projects. Thus, I decide to call my mother tongue “silent language”.
An early case is memory of preparing TOEFL (test of English as a foreign language). There’re four parts in the test, which are Reading, Listening, Speaking and Writing. The most grueling time every day must be speaking. I need enough time to organize my ideas and words. But there’s only less than one minute to prepare for each topic in listening part. I was feeling really disappointed because I could neither think up enough evidence to stand for my point of view nor express my evidence clearly and beautifully. Then the most frequent words I would hear from teachers were, “You can just practice more,” and “Just be brave and speak up”. That was quite useless for me because I didn’t think they were helpful in the long term of my growth of speaking ability. Their practice meant to remember many other old questions and just try to change them to a suitable version of new questions. I felt like I was only attempting to repeat old things and got no sense of producing or organizing good creative ideas when listening to new questions. To be honest, I still could not do conversations at all. At the same time, I gained no bravery from successfully removing an old idea to a new question. As a contrast, it was really different in the Writing part. When I had enough time to organize my most satisfied opinions and was able to make changes whenever I want, I could do the task more composedly. Then my instinct started to guide me to do more writing assignments rather than speaking. It was avoiding the area where would make me uncomfortable and frustrated. In another word, the silent writing part is more comfortable for me and more likely to be the “Mother Tongue”.
Rethinking Expression
There’s another example. I had a geography course last semester. Group discussing took a large part of that class. Every time when I attempted to convince myself on being capable to do that, I felt like I was immersed by sea made of noise. I tried to find "where I was". However, I was continuedly failed. My eyesight was blurry and my thoughts were facing powerful resistance. Nonetheless, the group members' ideas moved quickly, like swordfish in water flashing by. I sat there mechanically, trying to piece together what was just said, while the conversation kept flowing without me. The similar situation repeated to happen. The enormous pressure forced me to analyze the reasons seriously instead of deceiving myself. At first, I summarized the it as being poor in English. But I asked myself, could I lead a great group discussion even if they were all speaking Chinese? That was still not possible! Although I sometimes must use the translation tool to check certain words and sentences, I didn’t feel struggled at all when finishing online assignments. I did an excellent and creative online job in the final task. It deeply convinced me that the largest issue was not language but the way of expressing.
I started to believe that my mother tongue wasn’t a language at all. In other words, it’s a distinct thinking style. I feel comfortable when being able to change, to edit my ideas. Moreover, I prefer showing my ideas completely as a whole production. Different than conversation, I don’t have to consider others’ words when organizing my own idea, which can prevent external factors interrupting my thoughts.
I may also need to further explain the meaning of this kind of mother tongue and how it can help people who share similar experiences. For those who also struggle to express their thoughts in spoken language, recognizing their own “silent language” may allow them to understand themselves better. Instead of forcing themselves to fit into traditional forms of communication, they can find confidence through the most natural ways of expression to them. In this sense, the mother tongue is not only a language, but also a space where one’s thoughts can exist safely and completely。