A first language (also native language, mother tongue, arterial language, or L1) is the language(s) a person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity. In some countries, the terms native language or mother tongue refer to the language of one's ethnic group rather than one's first language. Sometimes, there can be more than one mother tongue, (for example, when the child's parents speak different languages). Those children are usually called bilingual.
By contrast, a second language is any language that one speaks other than one's first language.
Read more about First Language: Terminology, Significance, On Multilinguality
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that.”
—Richard Rorty (b. 1931)