Mother
Tongues

You know

before they are born humans can hear their mothers talking,

so that as soon as one is born they can recognise her voice,

and the rhythm and melody and accent that she uses when she speaks.

And in those early years, human babies learn to speak themselves

by listening to their parents and siblings

and the rest of their family

as they talk to each other in the language that the family uses,

and start to echo them as they try to make the sounds themselves.

And they learn how words work,

how the different sounds have different meanings,

and how they fit together,

until they can say what they think,

what they want and what they don't want,

and they learn poetry from nursery rhymes,

and use their words to shape jokes and surprises,

and they learn how to ask questions

and find out more about the world.

That language of their family is known as their mother tongue,

and people can always think in their mother tongue,

even when they move to live somewhere else

where they speak a different language entirely.

So as the Message of Islam spread around the world,

the local people didn't all just start to speak in Arabic like the Messenger,

though they did use that language to read the Qur'an

and make the Sala.

But the Arabic used in the language of Islam

did often change the way that people spoke,

and they would sometimes add common words in Islam

to the language that they spoke.

And these words that come from the Arabic

can be heard in the mother tongues of lots of muslims today.

Because people don't just use their language to talk about trade,

or food or the weather.

People talk about their way of life,

and what their Islam means to it.

And people have always used their mother tongues to try to explain the meaning of their lives,

how humans fit into the world,

and the way that they think about it.

And as they deal with these most important things about their lives,

they try to find the most beautiful language to speak of them.

They search out the poetry that they can find within their mother tongues.