The Determinants of the Mother Tongue of Bilingual People

Abstract

In our world, there are still bilingual or multilingual people who find it difficult to identify their mother tongue or the mother tongue of a person in their society due to their mastery of two or more languages at the same level of proficiency to a great extent and due to their effective use of two or more languages in their daily lives. This study aimed to establish determinants that would assist us in identifying the language that is arguably a person's mother tongue or first language. The members of the study population were described in a manner that includes their personal and linguistic characteristics, using the descriptive method. This research included a proposal for a set of determinants in the form of a refereed and tested questionnaire distributed to the research sample, which is composed of bilingual people. In addition, the success rate of each of these determinants was measured in determining the mother tongue of the respondents to the questionnaire by calculating the frequency of the determinants that determined the mother tongue of respondents using the statistical analytical method. The study was able to determine the final determinants that help identify the mother tongue of bilingual people.