"Mother tongue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... find the ways and means to carry out his mission and to create for us actual human beings instead of phantoms. In his "Parisian Fatalities," Wagner said of the Germans in Paris that they learned anew to appreciate their mother tongue and to strengthen their patriotic feeling. "Rienzi" was an illustration of this patriotic sentiment. He now resolved to produce this composition for Dresden and the thought gave him fresh zeal for work. Elsewhere, he says of the Germans: "As much as they ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... genie trouve,"—and if execution be its chariot, what possible fame can there be for the slipshod writers of to-day, who spawn columns and volumes at so much a minute, regardless of the good name of their mother tongue, devoid of ideas, which are the product only of brains that have been ploughed up and sown with fruitful seed? An author's severest critic should be himself. To be carried away by the popular current ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... whose moments are numbered," replied he in perfectly pure English, but with a sonorous ring in the articulation of the words, which betrayed the fact that he was not speaking in his mother tongue. "Senor," he continued, "I am dying; the doctor has candidly told me so, though I needed no such assurance from him. The dreadful pangs which shoot through my tortured frame are such as no man could long endure and live. I am a true Catholic, senor, and I would fain ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... full impulse given by the appearance there of the New Testament of Erasmus. From that moment one thought was at his heart. He "perceived by experience how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... England, so near in miles, are still so far away in instinctive comprehension of each other's mode of poetical utterance! No two nations have minds of quite the same "fringe." No man, however complete a linguist, has more than one real mother tongue, and it is only in one's mother tongue that a lyric sings with all its over-tones. And nevertheless, life offers few purer pleasures than may be found in listening to the half-comprehended songs uttered by alien lips indeed, but from hearts that we ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Ganef! Nebich!" By which Abrahm Kantor, in smiting mother tongue, branded his offspring with attributes of apostate and ne'er-do-well, of idiot ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... are in English translations, dated 1606 (by Richard Stock), 1632, 1687, and 1827. The present translation is thus the fifth into Campion's mother tongue. Though each of the quaint old versions has its merits, and some do not lack charm, not one would adequately represent Campion to the modern reader. A new translation was a necessity—may I not say, a most ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... for us, Giusippe, it is quite true that we Americans are as a rule pitiably ignorant about languages. Here is this boy, Jean, who knows not only his mother tongue but French, German and English besides. Isn't that a rebuke to us, with our fine schools and our college educations? It makes me ashamed of myself. Do you, little girl, try and do better than I have. Well, young ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... first learned to speak German; but, moving with his family when he was eight or nine years of age to an English-speaking community, he had lost his ability to speak German, and had been unable for a third of a century to carry on a conversation in his mother tongue. Yet during the last days of his sickness he lost almost wholly the power to use the English language, and spoke fluently in German. During all these years his brain paths had retained the power to reproduce the forgotten words, even though for so long a time the words could not be ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... over which the Apache proper held undisputed sway. With these, affiliation practically became fusion, for in outward semblance, characteristics, mode of living, and handicraft they are typically Apache; but their mother tongue, though impaired, and remnants of their native mythology are still adhered to. Through the Apache-Mohave, allied with the Apache since early times, and resembling them so closely as to have almost escaped segregation until recent years, did the tribe ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... fight,—when such as these Presume to lay their hand upon the ark Of her magnificent and awful cause? Time was when it was praise and boast enough In every clime, and travel where we might, That we were born her children; praise enough To fill the ambition of a private man, That Chatham's language was his mother tongue, And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own. Farewell those honours, and farewell with them The hope of such hereafter! They have fallen Each in his field of glory, one in arms, And one in council—Wolfe ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... authorities. Now be so good as to listen. The great moralist says: "To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the paternal till without remorse, and repeat the banquet of Saturn without ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... developed, in the pathsala, some power of observation, some power of reasoning and some power of expression through the healthy medium of his own mother tongue, young Jagadis was sent to an English School for education. He passed the Entrance Examination, in 1875, from the St. Xavier's Collegiate School, Calcutta, in the First Division. He then joined the College classes of that Institution, ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... derriple for terrible, a daple-leck for a table-leg, bepples for pebbles, tisasder for disaster, schimnastig dricks for gymnastic tricks, let-bencil for lead-pencil, &c. The peculiarity of Germans pronouncing in their mother tongue s like sh when it is followed by a t or p, and of Germans in southern Germany often also final s like sh, naturally produced in their American jargon such results as shplit, shtop, shtraight, shtar, shtupendous, shpree, shpirit, &c; ish(is), ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... little polished, he will agree with any government, like the king with his customs; for we know by repeated experience that great talents and learning are not necessary in a governor, as there are a hundred at least who govern like gerfalcons, though they can hardly read their mother tongue. Provided their intention is righteous and their desire to do justice, they will never want counsellors to direct them in every transaction, like your military governors, who being illiterate themselves, never decide without the advice of an assessor. I shall advise him ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... splendid! ... You have a bewitching Riga enunciation, the most correct of all the German ones. And so, let us continue in my tongue. That is far sweeter to my ear—my mother tongue. All right?" ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... a great many Russian and English gentlemen and ladies on board to-day, and the time has passed cheerfully away. They were all happy-spirited people, and I never heard our mother tongue sound so pleasantly as it did when it fell from those English lips in this far-off land. I talked to the Russians a good deal, just to be friendly, and they talked to me from the same motive; I am sure that both enjoyed the conversation, but never a word of it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to a school in the neighbourhood, where I learned the first rudiments of my mother tongue, writing, reading, and simple arithmetic. The school closed at half-past four o'clock in the afternoon; when I returned to the Lodge, for so the cottage was called in which we resided, and which stood just ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... I know pantry is not Greek." The captain tries English fustian, and when Gradus maintained that the words are English, "Out upon you for a jackanapes," cries the old man; "as if I didn't know my own mother tongue!" and gives his verdict ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... extant literary monuments of the Anglo-Saxons possess a singular value as illustrations of the character of the people, and have the additional attraction of being written in what was really our mother tongue. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... tacai iama 'a high mountain,' xiguei ideiri 'frequent comings and goings,' caxicoi (10 fito 'a wise man,' cavaij mono 'a wretched thing,' aiaui coto 'a dangerous thing,' umare tuqi no cuchi 'one's natural, or mother tongue.' There are also adjectives ending in na which, when they are placed before nouns, do not alter the construction; e.g., qirei na coto 'a clean thing.' All the adjectives, except those ending in no, change their form in some way when they ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... government, a party was sent in quest of him. After some trouble he was discovered, and brought into the settlement; but the results of his past life with the blacks were, that he had entirely forgotten his mother tongue, and had acquired new ways and sympathies that long deterred him from assimilating to those of the whites. Considering his many and peculiar vicissitudes, a remission of the penalty to which he was liable was obtained from the Crown; and a perpetual ticket-of-leave was granted him, provided ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... diplomatist, on whose breast we can count, by the badges of honour, how many courts thou hast visited with thy princely master, speak mildly of Scherezade's name! speak of her in French, that she may be ennobled above her mother tongue! translate but one strophe of her song, as badly as thou canst, but carry it into the brilliant saloon, and her sentence of death is annulled ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... over with them the English of James I. and the Authorized Version, and their descendants of a century later, inheriting it, allowed the fundamentals to be but little changed by the academic overhauling that the mother tongue was put to during the early part of ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... time, and after all that has been said about Behmen's barbarous style, Bishop Martensen tells us how the readers of SCHELLING were surprised and enraptured by a wealth of new expressions and new turns of speech in their mother tongue. But all these belonged to Behmen, or were fashioned on the model of his symbolical language. As it is, with all his astrology, and all his alchemy, and all his barbarities of form and expression, I for one will always take sides ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... said Goethe, "since it is hard enough to express such uncommon matters in one's own mother tongue." ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... between the character and intellect of the two men. The typical Englishman, with his rough, strong sense, passing at times into the narrowest insular prejudice, detested the Frenchified fine gentleman who minced his mother tongue and piqued himself on cosmopolitan indifference to patriotic sentiment: the ambitious historian was irritated by the contempt which the dilettante dabbler in literature affected for their common art; and the thoroughgoing Whig was scandalised by the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Bentham's mirth. It certainly did not strike us as very pure English; but, as Mr Mill used it, we supposed it to be good Benthamese. With the latter language we are not critically acquainted, though, as it has many roots in common with our mother tongue, we can contrive, by the help of a converted Utilitarian, who attends us in the capacity of Moonshee, to make out a little. But Mr Bentham's authority is of course decisive; and we bow ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in her, young and warm, aglow, but looking like the dead woman and the woman of the frieze—the woman of the lamp—bowls—the statue—come to life, speaking to him in English more sweetly than if it had been her mother tongue. The English abuse their language. Yasmini caressed it and made it do its ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... the just copies of their writings. You do not know that but as your Fathers have told you, which may be as well false as true, if you have no other better ground than tradition. You say that the interpretation of Scripture into our mother tongue is according to the mind of the spirit. You cannot tell that neither, unless you are able to say that those who did interpret those writings have had the same testimony of spirit as the pen-men of Scripture had. ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... their manners, customs, and language; the indigenous Malays are next in point of numbers, and their language is the Lingua-franca of the place. Next come the descendants of the Portuguese—a mixed, degraded, and degenerate race, but who still keep up the use of their mother tongue, though ruefully mutilated in grammar; and then there are the English rulers, and the descendants of the Dutch, who all speak English. The Portuguese spoken at Malacca is a useful philological phenomenon. The verbs have mostly ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... used to spend some of his time with the little chap after that. He would bring books and read to him in his mother tongue, or tell him wonderful stories. The poor little chap was so happy to see him and always used to kiss 'Uncle Nick,' as Karl taught the boy to call him. And when the little fellow died, Karl wept just as though the lad had been his own kin, and insisted upon following ...
— The Marx He Knew • John Spargo
... are going down the road now, in the same direction we are," Josh went on to say; "I'd like to come up with them, and hear a few words in my own mother tongue. Let me tell you I'm tired of listening to only ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... and varied, which produces these colours, in which we ever feel that fire they proceed from. There is a life and a brilliancy in this composition which characterise the country and the inhabitants. The play of Romeo and Juliet translated into Italian would only seem to return to its mother tongue. ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... therefore a common tongue. Then world peace will be permanently assured. It is coming inevitably and faster than we think. Once this desired end is seriously sought, the carrying of three generations of children through the public schools where the world language is taught together with the mother tongue, and the passing of the parents and grandparents, ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... yoursel' about Madge, Richard Jennifer. She's meat for your betters, sir!" rasped the old man, lapsing into the mother tongue, as he did now and ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... "Wait a moment. 'There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood—' How does that line go? I was educated in England and speak English as I do my mother tongue—" ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Wandering Jew Wasn't enough of it to make a pie We all like to see people seasick when we are not, ourselves Well provided with cigars and other necessaries of life What's a fair wind for us is a head wind to them Whichever one they get is the one they want Who have actually forgotten their mother tongue in three months Worth while to get tired out, because one so ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... are current in Hindostan. We ought rather to wonder the number of Hindostanie words in the Gypsey language, is so considerable, than to require it should be greater, to furnish sufficient proof of the Hindostanie language being the Gypsies' mother tongue. ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... earliest age Beethoven evinced a disposition for music; or, in other words, he learnt the language of music and his mother tongue both at the same time; and as modulated sounds seldom fail to make a deep impression on a young, fervid mind, when they are almost constantly presented to it, as was the case in the present instance, he soon acquired, ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... English not your mother tongue, or do you want me to repeat it in French, by way of making it clearer? Don't ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... my mother tongue,' said the man; 'you're what goes by the name of a learned gentleman. Thank ye, sir. You'll ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... no language but her own, and to that ignorance (which one is tempted in these days occasionally to think desirable) she probably owed the remarkable power and purity with which she used her mother tongue. Her conversation and her letters were perfect models of spoken and written English. Her marriage with Mr. Montagu was attended with some singular circumstances, the knowledge of which I owe to herself. She was a Yorkshire widow lady, and came with her only child ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... chief difficulty consists in making acquaintance with every idea which it expresses, even though it should use words for which there is no exact equivalent in the mother tongue; and this often happens. In learning a new language a man has, as it were, to mark out in his mind the boundaries of quite new spheres of ideas, with the result that spheres of ideas arise where none were before. Thus he not only learns words, ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... more beauty: all her features were fine and regular; but her shape was not good: yet she was slender, straight enough, and taller than the generality of women: she was very graceful, danced well, and spoke French better than her mother tongue: she was well bred, and possessed, in perfection, that air of dress which is so much admired, and which cannot be attained, unless it be taken when young, in France. While her charms were gaining ground in the king's heart, the Countess of Castlemaine amused ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... She had many teachers, of course, and under Hildebrand's guiding genius, the work was not stopped until the young countess could speak French, German, and Latin with the same ease as she did her mother tongue. ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... the chalet-door; And gracefully a light wind bore, Direct upon my webster's wall, A monster in the form of ball; The mildest captive ever snared, That neither struggled nor despaired, On half the net invading hung, And plain as in her mother tongue, While low the weaver cursed her lures, Remarked, "You have me; I ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the ship's books, owning to the Spanish names bestowed on them by Hernando. The two gentlemen went as passengers, with a sailor each as servant; the other three took their places amongst the crew. Two of them had been long enough in the galleys to speak Spanish as well as they spoke their mother tongue. They cleared Santiago safely towards ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... stamped in black and gold, printed with red line borders, wittily written, valuable to all who would speak their mother tongue with accuracy. ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... servant in the kitchen. I have never had a friend or a kind word, except from you. I have been made to tend the little girls in the lower schoolroom, and to talk French to the Misses, until I grew sick of my mother tongue. But that talking French to Miss Pinkerton was capital fun, wasn't it? She doesn't know a word of French, and was too proud to confess it. I believe it was that which made her part with me; and so thank Heaven for French. Vive la ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Thy mother tongue, the great stream that spreads abroad in seven branches, pouring out love and light like an echo from Paradise, thy golden speech, O Romance daughter of the King-People, is the song that will live on human lips as long as ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... use of physical force, yet there never was born among the sons of men a more militant soul in the use of moral force, in the quickness with which he would whip out the rapiers, or hurl the bolts and bombs of his mother tongue at opponents. The pioneer must have been an unconscious believer in the annihilation of the wicked, as he must have been an unconscious believer in the wickedness of all opposition to his idea of right and duty. This, of course, must be taken only as a broad description of the reformer's character. ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... in a broad survey of schools in general that there has also been a disposition to develop a special training in thought and expression either in the mother tongue (as in the Roman schools of Latin oratory), or in the culture tongue (as in Roman schools of Greek oratory), and we find the same element in the mediaeval trivium. Quintilian's conception of education, the reader will remember, was oratory. This aspect of school work was the traditional ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... top and pitch" of their possible perfection—"poore soules after many years travelling being found in the same place and going the same pace!" He hopes that this book on Perfection which he is now giving "common vulgar people in their own mother tongue," though it is a way that is "high and hard and almost unheard of amongst us," may help men to grow up into their full stature and to come to "the uttermost steps of Jacob's Ladder which reacheth into the heavens." The lower stages of the religious life ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... of 40l. 18s. part of the said premises to be appropriated for the interment of protestant dissenters; part of the profits to be applied to the use of a religious society in Carr's lane, at the discretion of the trust; and the remainder, for the institution of a school to teach the mother tongue. ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... Englishmen acquired the new language, in order to use it as an instrument for personal advancement. The Saxon stripling who could keep accounts in Norman fashion, and speak French as fluently as his mother tongue, might hope to sell his knowledge in a good market. As the steward of a Norman baron he might negotiate between my lord and my lord's tenants, letting my lord know as much of his tenant's wishes, and revealing to the tenants as much ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the cause of the unhappiness of the people and of the best of kings. A third addressed a few words to her in German: the Queen told her she did not understand it; that she had become so entirely French as even to have forgotten her mother tongue. This declaration was answered with "Bravo!" and clapping of hands; they then desired her to make a compact with them. "Ah," said she, "how can I make a compact with you, since you have no faith in that which my duty points out to me, and which ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... Jesus was what we should call an ignorant man. Refinement of manners and acuteness of intellect have, in the East, nothing in common with what we call education. In all probability Jesus did not know Greek. His mother tongue was the Syrian dialect, mingled with Hebrew. No element of secular teaching reached him. He was ignorant of all beyond Judaism; his mind kept that free innocence which an extended and varied culture always ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... clever as well as handsome. The eldest of his father's seven sons, he was educated as befitted the heir to the title and to the family estate at Thirkleby and Mattersea. He knew the French and Latin languages well, and, what is more to the point, used his mother tongue with grace and elegance. Botany and landscape-gardening were his chief amusements, while with the great literature of the day he was as familiar as with the great ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... also well acquainted with many Indian tribes. He knew their customs, he understood their methods of warfare, and was well liked by the Indians themselves. He spoke their chief languages as well as he did his mother tongue. ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... was French, I began to talk to him in his own language, which was my mother tongue, and so we were quickly friends. I told him that my parents were both dead and that I had no home, and he being of a kind-hearted, sympathetic nature, invited me to go home with him, which invitation ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... scriptures in the mother tongue, shall forfeit land, cattle, life, and goods from their heirs forever, and so be condemned for heretics to God, enemies to the crown, and most arrant traitors ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... began at the beginning of his memory, and told his father all that he could remember. When he came to speak about his solitary musings in the garret, he said—and long before he reached this part, he had relapsed into his mother tongue: ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... which mutely tell the tale of long sorrow and suffering. Her appearance awoke all those chivalrous feelings which are the honor of the military profession. She was speechless with emotion. The officer addressed her with kind and respectful inquiries. Those were the first words of her mother tongue she had heard for four weeks. Like the breath of the "sweet south" blowing across the fabled lute, those syllables, speaking of home and friends, relaxed the tension to which her nerves had been so long ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Middle and Eastern Europe would feel insulted if his mother tongue were now so described. If these Jewish scholars have succeeded, within a generation, in giving their masses a language of which they may feel proud, surely it should be an easy task for us to supply the needs of our own vernaculars which are cultured languages. South Africa teaches ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
... is Lancelot Carnegan. I hail from Ireland, as you may suppose; and perhaps you may have already discovered a touch of the brogue—but it has been well-nigh washed out of me; still, though we children of Erin roam the world over, we never entirely get rid of our mother tongue." ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... German spirit, and spared no pains to accomplish his purpose. While yet a teacher at Leipzig he announced a course of lectures to be delivered in the German language. The outcry was great against him; but he persevered, and henceforth delivered all his lectures in his mother tongue. Since his time the use of Latin, as a colloquial, has gradually decreased, and at the present day the German is the chief language employed at the universities. Thomasius was also the first to combat the system of prosecutions for witchcraft, and the application ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... top. A fine wreck she is! I go to see her very often, and next time I will call for you and we will propose our French plan; nothing will please her better, I know. By the way, Ellen, are you as well versed in the other common branches of education as you are in your mother tongue?" ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of some of the neighbouring tribes, and it proved not unlike that of the Little Cherry Indians. Francois found in the village an Indian who had been brought up among the Spaniards of the Pacific Coast, and who still spoke their language as readily as he spoke his mother tongue. He questioned him eagerly about the distance to the Spanish settlements and the difficulties of the way. The man replied that the journey was long. It was also, he said, very dangerous, because it must be through the country of the Snake Indians. ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... she will," interrupted the elder lady; "people of Mrs. Anderton's class always think it is more genteel to have a smattering of foreign languages than to know their own mother tongue. We may get another German—and ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... the corruptions of the English language since the reign of Queen Ann, in our style of writing prose. A few easy rules for the attainment of a manly, unaffected and pure language, in our genuine mother tongue, whether for the purpose of writing, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... which he bestows on himself."[84] This was certainly true in Gibbon's case. On his arrival at Lausanne he hardly knew any French, but before he returned to England he thought spontaneously in French and understood, spoke, and wrote it better than he did his mother tongue.[85] He read Montesquieu frequently and was struck with his "energy of style and boldness of hypothesis." Among the books which "may have remotely contributed to form the historian of the Roman Empire" were the Provincial Letters of Pascal, which he read "with a new pleasure" almost every ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... half-asleep and half-awake, dreamily promising myself, if the weather were favorable on the morrow, that I would venture out of doors, I fancied I heard a voice, muttering words in my own mother tongue. I rose, and resting on my elbow, listened attentively—but then a profound silence reigned around me. Persuaded, that feeble as I still was, I had mistaken a dream for a reality, I languidly let my head ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... whatever was his origin, the child had received Christian baptism. The boy throve, his noble blood mantled in his cheek, and he grew strong, notwithstanding poor living. The Danish language, as it is spoken in West Jutland, became his mother tongue. The pomegranate seed from the Spanish soil became the coarse grass on the west coast of Jutland. Such ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... the nations visited by the missionary Theophilus, in the time of Constantius, were "the Assyrians on the verge of the outer ocean towards the East ... whom Alexander the Great, after driving them from Syria, sent thither to settle, and to this day they keep their mother tongue, though all of the blackest, through the power of the sun's rays." The Arab voyagers of the 9th century say that the island was colonised with Greeks by Alexander the Great, in order to promote the culture of the Socotrine aloes; when the other Greeks adopted Christianity ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... voices I used to hear Round such a fireside, Speaking the mother tongue old and dear; Making the heart beat, With endless tales of wonder and fear, Or ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... now that the sharpness of excitement had gone out of it, was a very pleasant voice. The broken words he used assured Nan that his mother tongue must be French. He was probably one of the "Canucks" she had heard her cousins speak of. French Canadians were not at all strange to Nan Sherwood, for in Tillbury many of the mill hands were ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... one or both of his brothers. Dr. Draper says: "In the action of Fort Washington Henry Bedinger heard a Hessian captain, having been repulsed, speak to his riflemen in his own language, telling them to follow his example and reserve their fire until they were close. Bedinger, recognizing his mother tongue, watched the approach of the Hessian officer, and each levelled his unerring rifle at the other. Both fired, Bedinger was wounded in the finger: the ball passing, cut off a lock of his hair. The Hessian was shot through the head, and instantly ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... native who showed honesty and courage in successfully opposing them at Tamatave the French subsequently executed. The Queen and Prime Minister were banished. Speaking English, the chief foreign language spoken, has been tabooed. Natives who are heard using it, or suspected of employing our mother tongue, are thrust into prison and kept there, pour encourager les autres, until they promise to discontinue speaking it. Association of natives with English or Americans renders them marked persons. The Protestant missions are regarded as centres of treason and enmity to French authority. ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... wad at that time hae been ruined and lost for ever. But Robin was a cunning man, an' had rather mae wits than his ain, for he had been in the hands o' the fairies when he was young, an' a' kinds o' spirits were visible to his een, an' their language as familiar to him as his ain mother tongue. Robin was sitting on the side o' the West Lowmond, ae still gloomy night in September, when he saw a bridal o' corbie craws coming east the lift, just on the edge o' the gloaming. The moment that Robin saw them, he kenned, by their movements, that they were craws o' some ither warld than ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... went on, "was a very well-informed man; now since he was not writing in his own mother tongue, he would naturally select that which was currently adopted by the choice spirits of the sixteenth century; I mean Latin. If I am mistaken, I can but try Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, or Hebrew. But the ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... object gives it a right to a place among paradoxes. It proposes a language—if that be the proper name—in which things and their relations shall be denoted by signs, not words: so that any person, whatever may be his mother tongue, may read it in his own words. This is an obvious possibility, and, I am afraid, an obvious impracticability. One man may construct such a system—Bishop Wilkins has done it—but where is the man ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... to the valley in which Teposcolula lies. The great convent church, historically interesting, is striking in size and architecture. The priest, an excellent man, is a pure-blooded Mixtec indian, talking the language as his mother tongue. With great pride he showed us about the building, which was once a grand Dominican monastery. The old carved wooden cupboard for gold and silver articles, used in the church service, is fine work. ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... quarters in the little castle nigh to Bruxelles which Frank had taken; rode his horses; drank his wine; and lived easily at the poor lad's charges. Mr. Esmond had always maintained a perfect fluency in the French, which was his mother tongue; and if this family (that spoke French with the twang which the Flemings use) discovered any inaccuracy in Mr. Simon's pronunciation, 'twas to be attributed to the latter's long residence in England, where he had married and remained ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... make me glad to have been born in England, one of the first is that I read Shakespeare in my mother tongue. If I try to imagine myself as one who cannot know him face to face, who hears him only speaking from afar, and that in accents which only through the labouring intelligence can touch the living soul, there comes upon me a sense of chill discouragement, of dreary deprivation. I am wont to ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... would be wanting in all the three above-mentioned conditions, which must concur, in order that in the benefit conferred there may be ready Liberality; and our Mother Tongue possesses all, as it is possible to show thus manifestly. The Latin would not have served many; for if we recall to memory that which is discoursed of above, the learned men, without the Italian tongue, could not have had this service. And those who ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... imperfectly the foreign lady had learned the language of her adopted country. They who understand the French language will be interested in observing that most of the errors which the writer falls into are those which result naturally from the usages of her mother tongue. ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... fair and subtile words on yester even, O sweet and incomparable knight! there did enter into my presence a base enchanter who did evilly enchant and bewitch me, making me to do dire offence unto the mother tongue. Soothly this base born enchanter did cause me to write "arms," when soothly I did mean an "alms," and sore grievousness be come upon me lest haply thou dost not understand this matter ere this missive reach thee. I do beseech thee have a care to tell the fair princesses ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... choice kind of composition, which might be called a poetical work, the roll of their lordly deeds; but also by having graven upon rocks and cliffs, in the characters of their own language, the works of their forefathers, which were commonly known in poems in the mother tongue. In the footsteps of these poems, being as it were classic books of antiquity, I have trod; and keeping true step with them as I translated, in the endeavour to preserve their drift, I have taken care to render verses by verses; so that the chronicle ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... questions that have been much debated, but it is certain that he applied himself resolutely to the study of English, and made such progress that, although he could never speak it with so much purity and command of words as when conversing in his mother tongue, he learnt to write it with only occasional errors in spelling and construction. In Latin he made some little progress, and in mathematics more. He attended voluntary classes on chemistry, and his letters evidence an inclination for the study both ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... or Swahili (official), Kiunguju (name for Swahili in Zanzibar), English (official, primary language of commerce, administration, and higher education), Arabic (widely spoken in Zanzibar), many local languages note: Kiswahili (Swahili) is the mother tongue of Bantu people living in Zanzibar and nearby coastal Tanzania; although Kiswahili is Bantu in structure and origin, its vocabulary draws on a variety of sources, including Arabic and English, and it has become the lingua franca ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... aloud, forgetting in my excitement that I was in a country where my mother tongue was only spoken and understood ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... their incidental corruption: you have shut up from him those whose thoughts strike home to our hearts, whose words are proverbs, whose names are indigenous to all the world, who are the standard of their mother tongue, and the pride and boast of their countrymen, Homer, Ariosto, Cervantes, Shakespeare, because the old Adam smelt rank in them; and for what have you reserved him? You have given him "a liberty unto" the multitudinous ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... well disposed to the proposition, and some of them warmly: however, there was no difference of opinion in the conclusion, that it could not be effected. The reasons which they thought would with certainty prevail against it, were, 1. that our youth, not familiarized but with their mother tongue, were not prepared to receive instructions in any other; 2. that the expense of the institution would excite uneasiness in their constituents, and endanger its permanence; and 3. that its extent ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... sores. The itch broke out again, virulent and from all accounts incurable. Fits returned with redoubled frequency and violence, the sane became demented or idiotic, and the most obviously British, losing the use of their mother tongue, swore with many gesticulatory sacres that they had no English, as indeed they had none for naval purposes. Looking at the miserable, disease-ridden crew, the uninitiated spectator was moved to tears of pity. Not so the naval officer. In France, when a prisoner of war, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... import. The cardinal smiled, and Peter Champneys besought his gods to let him get that smile on canvas. His Eminence was an ideal sitter. He spoke English beautifully, and it pleased him to converse with the lanky young American painter in his mother tongue. He felt drawn to the young man, and when the cardinal liked one, he was irresistible. Peter was so fascinated by this brilliant and versatile aristocrat, so deeply interested in the psychology of a great Roman ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... needeth no answer, no but stillness, either courteous scorn; for the great doctors were none English men, neither they were conversant among English men, neither in case they could the language of English, but they ceased never till they had holy writ in their mother tongue, of their own people. For Jerome, that was a Latin man of birth, translated the Bible, both out of Hebrew and out of Greek, into Latin, and expounded full much thereto; and Austin, and many more Latins expounded the bible, for many parts, in Latin, ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... the mother tongue of the Bantu people living in Zanzibar and nearby coastal Tanzania; although Kiswahili is Bantu in structure and origin, its vocabulary draws on a variety of sources, including Arabic and English, and it has become the lingua franca of central and eastern Africa; ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... those who were with me there. Separated for more than forty years from the home of my birth, being with, and becoming a part of another people—a noble, generous, and gallant people—and almost forgetting my mother tongue, these had faded away almost into forgetfulness; but, tottering with years, and full of sorrows, I am here amid the scenes made lovely and memorable by their presence, when we were all young and hopeful. They come back to me, and now, while I write, it seems their spirits float in the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... conceits, which first displeased us in his writings;—and which we are again very sorry to say, must in our opinion, if persisted in, utterly and entirely prevent Mr. Keats from ever taking his place among the pure and classical poets of his mother tongue. It is quite ridiculous to see how the vanity of these Cockneys makes them overrate their own importance, even in the eyes of us, that have always expressed such plain unvarnished contempt for them, and who do feel for them all, a contempt too calm and profound, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson |
