Can you lose your mother tongue?
Schmid is a leading researcher of language attrition, a growing field of research that looks at what makes us lose our mother tongue. Studies on international adoptees have found that even nine-year-olds can almost completely forget their first language when they are removed from their country of birth.
What does Mother Tongue mean?
Sometimes, the term “mother tongue” or “mother language”(or “father tongue” / “father language”) is used for the language that a person learned as a child (usually from their parents). Children growing up in bilingual homes can, according to this definition, have more than one mother tongue or native language.
At what age can you learn a language without an accent?
The ability to perceive these phonemic contrasts evidently persists for several more years, as evidenced by the fact that children can learn to speak a second language without accent and with fluent grammar until about age 7 or 8.