Father Tongue, Motherland

In Father Tongue, Motherland, Peggy Mohan looks at exactly how the mixed languages in South Asia came to life. Like a flame moving from wick to wick in early encounters between male settlers and locals skilled at learning languages, the language would start to 'go native' as it spread. This produced 'father tongues', with words taken from the migrant men's language, but grammars that preserved the earlier languages of the 'motherland'.