Teach Our Children in Their Mother Tongue

The terms “mother tongue” and “first language” are used to refer to the language that a child acquires first, even though the terms are not always synonymous. For instance, Kiswahili is mother tongue to children born of Swahili parents whose ancestral home is along the East African coast. However, many children growing up in urban centers like Nairobi today acquire Kiswahili as their first language, even though it is not their mother tongue, as their parents are not necessarily Swahili. The child’s first language, whether it is the mother tongue or not, is the most important to consider for purposes of learning. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.