Nietmoedertaal

Nietmoedertaal is a term used in linguistics to denote the language a speaker uses that is not their mother tongue. It functions as a category for describing how non-native languages are deployed in everyday speech, education, work, and online communication, and how such use intersects with competence, identity, and social expectations.

The word is Dutch, formed from niet (not) and moedertaal (mother tongue). It is usually written as one word and is not universally standardized; in English-language writings it may be rendered as "non-native language" or "not-native language."

As a flexible and context-dependent label, nietmoedertaal emphasizes the language status in a given situation rather than a fixed level of proficiency. Its use highlights that people may rely on different languages across domains, with varying fluency, lexical range, and pragmatic competence influenced by age of acquisition, exposure, and attitudes toward the languages involved.

Examples include a Dutch professional who conducts most meetings in English, a bilingual child who speaks Dutch at home but uses English at school, or a migrant speaker who writes emails in their non-native language while speaking their mother tongue in informal settings.

Relation to related concepts: second language, foreign language, multilingualism, language identity, code-switching, diglossia. The term is not yet a standard category in linguistics and should be defined clearly when used. See also: second language, mother tongue, multilingualism, code-switching, language prestige.