Laudator Temporis Acti

Einar Haugen (1906-1994), "The Mother Tongue," in Robert L. Cooper and Bernard J. Spolsky, edd., The Influence of Language on Culture and Thought: Essays in Honor of Joshua A. Fishman's Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991), pp. 75-84 (at 82):

In conclusion, I would suggest as a reasonable hypothesis that the term "mother tongue" has passed through three phases. In the early Middle Ages it was a primarily pejorative term to describe the unlearned language of women and children. It was in contrast with the "father's language" which was Latin. We cannot be sure whether it arose in Latin or German, but its presence in the Romance languages suggests that it may have been Latin. There is no reason to place it farther back than 1100. It arose to describe the new contrast between men's and women's language.

A second stage came with the Renaissance and the Reformation, when the mother tongue became also the language of God, speaking through the Bible. Thanks to Wycliffe in England and Luther in Germany and their Scandinavian followers, the mother tongue became a force to be reckoned with. But it remained to a great degree limited to the religious sphere.

Not until the Romantic eighteen hundreds did it become a concern of the heart that came home to every man and woman. After people like Dante, Shakespeare, and Holberg had created a public for the vulgari eloquentia, it became a point of honor to promote and care for the folk language in country after country. Then writers like Schenkendorf and Grundtvig could write lyrics to the mother tongue. Mother had been promoted from being a mere wet nurse to becoming the spokesman of God and finally a human being.

Haugen in the same article (p. 80) translates two stanzas from the poem "Muttersprache" (1814) by Max von Schenkendorf (1783-1817):

Oh mother tongue, oh mother sound,
How blissful, how beloved:
The first word to me reechoed,
The first sweet word of love,
The first tune I ever babbled,
It rings forever in my ear.

Alas, how sad at heart am I
When I in foreign lands reside,
When in foreign tongues I speak,
Have to use the foreign words
That I can never really love,
That do not ever reach my heart!

Muttersprache, Mutterlaut,
wie so wonnesam, so traut!
Erstes Wort, das mir erschallet,
süßes, erstes Liebeswort,
erster Ton, den ich gelallet,
klingest ewig in mir fort.

Ach, wie trüb ist meinem Sinn,
wenn ich in der Fremde bin,
wenn ich fremde Zungen üben,
fremde Worte brauchen muß,
die ich nimmermehr kann lieben,
die nicht klingen als ein Gruß!

Related posts:

• The Sound of One's Mother-Tongue
• Forsaking One's Native Language
• The Mother Tongue
• Muttersprache
• Our National Language
• We are Born Inside a Language