"Min Modersprak, so slicht un recht,
Du ole frame Red!
Wenn blot en Mund 'min Vader' seggt,
So klingt mi't as en Bed,"
and by Johann Meyer, in his Ditmarscher Gedichte:—
"Vaderhus un Modersprak!
Lat mi't nöm'n un lat mi't rop'n;
Vaderhus, du belli Sted,
Modersprak, da frame Red,
Schönres klingt der Nix tohopen,"
it may be that modersprak is not entirely a word of Low German origin; beautiful though it is, this dialect, so closely akin to our own English, did not directly give it birth. Nor do the corresponding terms in the other Teutonic dialects,—Dutch moederspraak, moedertaal, Swedish modersmål, etc.,—seem more original. The Romance languages, however, offer a clue. In French, langue mère is a purely scientific term of recent origin, denoting the root-language of a number of dialects, or of a "family of speech," and does not appear as the equivalent of Muttersprache. The equivalents of the latter are: French, langue maternelle; Spanish, lengua materna; Italian, lingua materna, etc., all of which are modifications or imitations of a Low Latin lingua materna, or lingua maternalis. The Latin of the classic period seems not to have possessed this term, the locutions in use being sermo noster, patrius sermo, etc. The Greek had [Greek: ae egchorios glossa ae idia glossa,] etc. Direct translations are met with in the moderlike sprake of Daniel von Soest, of Westphalia (sixteenth century), and the muoterliche spraach of Maaler (1561). It is from an Italian- Latin source that Dr. Lübben supposes that the German prototypes of modersprak and Muttersprache arose. In the Bôk der Byen, a semi-Low German translation (fifteenth century) of the Liber Apium of Thomas of Chantimpré, occurs the word modertale in the passage "Christus sede to er [the Samaritan woman] mit sachte stemme in erre modertale." A municipal book of Treuenbrietzen informs us that in the year 1361 it was resolved to write in the ydeoma maternale—what the equivalent of this was in the common speech is not stated—and in the Relatio of Hesso, we find the term materna lingua (105 a).
The various dialects have some variants of Muttersprache, and in Göttingen we meet with moimen spraken, where moime (cognate with Modern High German Muhme, "aunt"), signifies "mother," and is a child-word.
From the mother-tongue to the mother-land is but a step. As the speech she taught her babe bears the mother's name, so does also the land her toil won from the wilderness.
Mother-Land.
As we say in English most commonly "native city," so also we say "native land." Even Byron sings:—
"Adieu, adieu I my native shore
Fades o'er the waters blue;
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