The mother tongue.  The language we learn at our mother's knee, con la leche, I believe places an indelible stamp on who we are and how we think.  I understand the Sapir-Worf hypothesis has somewhat fallen out of favor in linguistic circles these days, but I take it as gospel.  I think the first language we learn as children, when the patterns of language-using synapses are first laid down in our brains, shape and color and define how we see the world, and ourselves in the world, in ways that are forever a part of us.  Learning other languages may expand and enrich, but never supplant, those original patterns.  I think the luckiest of all may be those children of bilingual or multilingual households.  I would love to see studies of the linguistic and cognitive abilities of such children.


We all bleed the same color.