Overcoming the Mother Tongue.

The “mother tongue” trips me when I’m writing and often makes me laugh.

I’m referring to the language I learned, well, from my mother.

Which is how my English dictionary defines it, too, or “the language learned as a baby at home before a child goes to school.”

You’ve got one, too!

What’s the issue with the mother tongue?

If you were raised by English (fill in your own language) teachers who also spoke with correct diction, care with usage, and proper grammar, this may not be an issue for you.

My mother taught P. E.

A college graduate, she spoke English and wrote just fine.

But it wasn’t her native tongue.

I never gave much thought to it until my writing started being edited.

Oh, my. This writer with a degree in English Literature twists the grammar all the time.

But, I’m generally not erring with verb tense issues which often trip people.

It’s the placement of the noun and the subsequent commas trying to wrangle the grammar into place.

Mom’s native language was Italian.

I’m skipping around with the romantics over here!

What difference does it make?

For most people, none.

Indeed, the influences of our native languages give our conversation flair, fun, interest.

Malapropisms, “the usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase,” make us laugh. (See Richard Sheridan’s play, The Rivals, or listen to anything Yogi Berra said.)

Colloquialisms, “an informal word or expression that is more suitable for use in speech than in writing,” are absolutely appropriate in dialogue.

However, they indicate something different about the author when they crop up like weeds in professional writing.

Few people listening to me would think I have a mother tongue problem.

I didn’t think I had a problem with language.

I felt confident until an editor took a red pencil to my work, and worse, Grammarly started commenting.

Learning Language

We learn our native language first through words, then sentences, and so forth. Grammar and reading come later.

God designed us for communication and that’s why we’ve got two ears and one mouth!

In my case, I learned English from my Sicilian native mother, mutt American father, and Croatian babysitters in a multi-lingual town.

I turned out to be a musician and I have an ear for how things sound. Music, yes, but also the way people express themselves and their word choices.

I grew up loving the accents–everyone I knew had some sort of accent or swirl to the way they spoke and the words they used.

The zest of French intrigued me. Slavic languages sounded dense and ponderous; I’d always tense up–was someone in trouble?

The Cuban Spanish whispered by Anamaria Pestana (what a lyrical name!), sounded rounded and I could almost smell roses.

Texans in my family drawled slow and laconic, stuffed with images that meant nothing to a city girl.

My Sicilian grandmother trilled high and half the time reminded me of the chickens she tended.

But I added them all to my speech, and used them in the stories constructed in my imagination and whispered in my dreams.

How does the mother tongue influence?

I’m editing these days. I’m aghast at the gnarled sentences I wrote. The Grammarly extension is horrified as well–though it does like my “impressive” vocabulary. (Thanks, Dad).

Sentence by sentence, I read through the manuscript–first in paper, now on the computer again. For the twentieth time.

(Of course, I’ve run spell and grammar check many, many times. I can’t explain how poorly Word’s version of Spellcheck is failing me.)

There on the page, I see my mother tongue. More specifically, my mother’s.

I shake my head. Grammarly insists, and it’s right, the expression is “a couple OF hours,” not “a couple hours.”

Hey. That’s how I heard it. Why would I think differently? (Of course, I had it wrong).

My mom and her sister both would begin a sentence with a gerund/verb, and then put the noun in the middle.

Example: “Wearing a blue cotton dress, Gloria paused to brush off the red dust.”

That’s not necessarily an incorrect sentence, but when you reread it with an editor’s eye, can you see how it tumbles unnecessarily?

It’s far clearer to write, “Gloria paused to brush off the red dust from her blue cotton dress.”

My mother tongue did that to me.

So what?

In normal life, it doesn’t matter at all.

Indeed, the influences of our mother tongues make our speech and conversation more interesting.

We learn new ideas, new ways of expressing thoughts while encountering different language usages.

That’s why English is such an elastic language, and what makes it fun.

In speaking, your word choices and grammar may or may not make a difference.

But it does in writing.

I’m a writer. I just finished writing another book. The grammar needs to be correct. The colloquialisms need to be tamed. (I wish it had a malapropism because I think they’re hilarious. Alas, no.)

With the editing now done, I (wait! is that clear?) can now hand the manuscript off to a professional and not be so concerned my mother tongue will betray me.

And if it does?

Well, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra: ” It’s like déjà vu all over again.”

Tweetables

Wrangling the mother tongue into proper English. Click to Tweet

Adventures in editing: taming the mother tongue. Click to Tweet