International Mother Language Day
On code-switching, dialects, neologisms...
[Sculpture from La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina]
How do you define your mother tongue? For me, it was Spanish spoken before the age of five.
But there are so many other types of mother tongues: The language of family, kin, neighborhood, class, region, dialects, so much code-switching and cultural subtleties that are not fully captured by the conventional term “mother tongue.”
And sometimes, mother languages die.
How is the broader definition of your own mother tongue reflected in your work? Do your characters speak in patois? Do they create their own languages? Do you write in your mother tongue or in your other adopted languages?