mother language与native language有什么区别?英语

查了很多， 发现这两个词没什么大区别，都是母语的意思。 但Native language有本族语、本地语的意思，强调当地大多数人所说的当地语言，有点针对地方的意思。mother language来源于mother tongue， 有时会强调个人小时候在家乡学的语言，有点针对各人的母语的意思。
总之区别不大，这两个词基本可以混用。
这里是我google时 发现的一些内容，可能有用吧：
Sometimes the term native language is used to indicate a language that a person is as proficient in as a native individual of that language's "base country", or as proficient as the average person who speaks no other language but that language.[citation needed]
Sometimes the term mother tongue or mother language is used for the language that a person learnt as a child at home (usually from their parents). Children growing up in bilingual homes can, according to this definition, have more than one mother tongue or native language.
In the context of population censuses conducted on the Canadian population, Statistics Canada defines mother tongue as "the first language learned at home in childhood and still understood by the individual at the time of the census."[3] It is quite possible that the first language learned is no longer a speaker's dominant language. This includes young immigrant children, whose families have moved to a new linguistic environment, as well as people who learned their mother tongue as a young child at home (rather than the language of the majority of the community), who may have lost, in part or in totality, the language they first acquired (see language attrition).
[edit] Mother LanguageThe origin of the term "mother tongue" harks back to the notion that linguistic skills of a child are honed by the mother and therefore the language spoken by the mother would be the primary language that the child would learn.
In some countries such as Kenya, India, and various East Asian countries, "mother language" or "native language" is used to indicate the language of one's ethnic group, in both common and journalistic parlance (e.g. 'I have no apologies for not learning my mother tongue'), rather than one's first language. Also in Singapore, "mother tongue" refers to the language of one's ethnic group regardless of actual proficiency, while the "first language" refers to the English language that was established on the island through British colonisation, which is the lingua franca for most post-independence Singaporeans due to its use as the language of instruction in government schools and as a working language.

International Mother Language Day Monument in Sydney, Australia, unveiling ceremony, 19 February 2006J. R. R. Tolkien in his 1955 lecture "English and Welsh" distinguishes the "native tongue" from the "cradle tongue," the latter being the language one happens to learn during early childhood, while one's true "native tongue" may be different, possibly determined by an inherited linguistic taste, and may later in life be discovered by a strong emotional affinity to a specific dialect (Tolkien personally confessed to such an affinity to the Middle English of the West Midlands in particular).
21 February has been proclaimed the International Mother Language Day by UNESCO on 17 November 1999.

你好：给你做个比方你就可以明白，比如你是一个中国人，你现在出生在美国，mother language就是你的中国语言，而你说的美国话就是native language，希望能帮到你

native language 针对地方,当地（或出生地）的语言
mother language 针对人,母语
美国当地的语言：English ,
中国人在美国：
mother language 就是 Chinese 汉语
native language 就是 English 英语
祝开心哦!