" Consider the term Mother Tongue. In Russian the term is Rodnoi-yazyk, which means Nearest or Dearest Tongue. At a pinch one could call it Darling Tongue.
Mother Tongue is our first language, first heard as infants from the mouths of our mothers. Hence the logic of the term.
I mention it now because the creature of language, which i'm trying to describe, is undoubtedly feminine. I imagine its centre as a phonetic uterus.
Within one Mother Tongue are all Mother Tongues. Or, to put it another way: every Mother Tongue is universal. "

― John Berger , Confabulations