Who has the stronger influence?
What’s so controversial about whether or not children get their speech from their mother or father? Linguists and geneticists have struggled to answer this question for centuries.
Does your mother or your father have a stronger influence on their children’s language development?
These hypotheses are often referred to as The Mother and Father tongue Hypotheses. A recent study conducted by anthropological researchers and linguists in China say that the “Mother tongue hypothesis refers to [Language that follows matrilinial inheritance]. The Father tongue hypothesis refers to the paternal lines that dominate the local language.” (Science China Press ). Many in favor of Father tongue will often argue that paternal lineages which are associated with Y-chromosomes are often directly correlated with vocabulary and lexicons of the given language. While those on the opposing side who support Mother tongue say that maternal lineages are often associated with pronunciations or phonemes.
The main argument is that children tend to speak their fathers language based on a stronger lineage found on the male Y- Chromosome. Which if you think about it makes sense because of how dominant vocabulary and lexicons are in everyday language.There’s not a day that goes by where you aren’t using your vocabulary. This is precisely why researchers all around the world believe that the Father Tongue Hypothesis is more useful than the Mother Tongue Hypothesis. This argument in its simplest form is supported by The Radical Copyeditor, the style guide talks about experiences that transcend language; rather, cultural context is everything when it comes to gender.”. (The Radical Copyeditor) While the Mother and Father tongue hypotheses are not necessarily about gender they have typically followed similar cultural rules in Indo-European populations. The countries being studied are Northern India, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. From the countries listed there are several language branches including; Anatolian, Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Greek, Germanic, Indo-Iranian, Italic, and Tocharian.
I agree that the Father Tongue Hypothesis is better than the Mother Tongue Hypothesis because lexicons encode phonological and morphological information that is vital in establishing meaningful contrasts. This is especially important and true for young children who are learning how to speak, learn, and write in their native or perhaps their second language.
After learning about this topic, I asked around campus and got a pretty concise answer.
Which hypothesis do you support more? Mother or Father Tongue?
Lexi answered that “she supports mother tongue because I associate it with mothers who typically spend more time with their children when they are babies and first learning to speak”.
Kayli answered “I think mother tongue because that’s always what I’ve heard in popular movies, tv-shows, and everyday speech”.
Many of the students I interviewed said that they believe Mother Tongue because of the bond that mothers and newborns create, as well as the linguistic culture around the term mother tongue.
Menghan Zhang, Hong-Xiang Zheng, Shi Yan, Li Jin, Reconciling the father tongue and mother tongue hypotheses in Indo-European populations, National Science Review,Volume 6, Issue 2, March 2019, Pages 293–300, https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwy083
“Whose Influence Is Stronger on Kids Language Mom or Dad? .” Dynamite News, www.dynamitenews.com/story/whose-influence-is-stronger-on-kids-language-mom-or-da d. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.