First language is the language a person is most familiar with and learns in their early years. It differs from mother tongue and second language. Language acquisition is a skill that needs development. Bilingualism has benefits, including better thought processes and social skills. A person’s first language reveals their identity and upbringing.
The term “first language” refers to the language with which a person is most familiar and most used to speaking. Usually, it is the language that a person hears and eventually learns in the years following birth. The term is widely differentiated from other terms such as “mother tongue”, as it generally refers to the language of a collective group, not a person. The first language is also distinguished from the “second language”, relating to the language that a person speaks less fluently.
Many linguists and early childhood educators view language acquisition and learning as a skill that needs to be developed over time, as opposed to it being innate and instinctive. This principle can be seen in the acquisition of a first language, as the child needs to constantly hear it from its surroundings, for example from its parents at home. After a certain period of imitation of the sounds, the child will begin to associate the words with the object they refer to, eventually learning to insert more words into sentences and phrases according to the syntax of that specific language. When the child has learned to speak his first language in the “crucial years”, probably before the age of 6, he is more likely to retain the language for the rest of his life, even when he has learned other languages or emigrated to another country .
Children may often have only one first language, but this is not always the case, especially in countries that speak more than two languages, such as India, Singapore and Hong Kong. When a child has two or more first languages, they are identified as ‘bilingual’ or ‘multilingual’. Bilingual parents are also more likely to pass on their fluency in two languages to their children. Previous studies have claimed that children who are taught two languages may become confused, but more recent studies have shown that bilingual children have better thought processes in things like classifying and organizing objects. They may also have better social skills, as along with language, the child will also learn non-verbal cues and decency associated with language.
A person’s first language reveals a lot about their identity and upbringing, especially when their first language is not the ‘mother tongue’ of their home country. For example, a Filipino child who is more fluent in English may have been born into an upper-middle-class family, been exposed to more Western culture, and socialized with other middle-class families. On many occasions, a person who has a first and second language has a tendency to mix the two languages as they speak, an action called “code mixing”.
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