Now, he said, most Singaporeans were taught in English, with their ancestral tongue a second language.
Others worry about younger people losing touch with their ancestral tongue.
Today, in 28 villages like this one, a tribe of 18,000 people operates schools where the ancestral tongue is taught.
Among themselves both kinds used ancestral tongues, unless Lunarian was all that they had in common.
It is possible that all oral languages spoken in the world today are related by direct or indirect descent from a single ancestral tongue.
Finally, many ethnic Gaddang have migrated to other countries, and their children are not learning the ancestral tongue.
It's the very latest fad among Dartmouth undergraduates, cussing in one's ancestral tongue.
This may indicate the loss of their ancestral tongue by at least some of the tribes.
He passed beneath trees whose branches sang to him in ancient, ancestral tongues.
The very success of English as a global language is prompting a revival of ancestral tongues.