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Your native country is your "motherland"/ "fatherland", the land of your ancestors is your "fatherland" and your first language is your "mother tongue".

What do you call the home in which you grew up and spent most of your childhood (any other mother/father-containing word or phrase such as father home, mother home, maternal home, paternal home, or ___)?

I want to use it in sentences like these:

  • "When I was single and still living in my ___, I didn't eat meat food at all, but after getting married I stared to change my habit."

  • After their parents' death, they sold their house and went to another city and took all of the memories of that ___ with them."

PS:

In my country we call it "fatherhome".

Soudabeh
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    Simply home. Perhaps when describing it to others 'our house' or 'our home'. – Icy Apr 23 '16 at 18:29
  • @Icy, thanks, what if you don't live there anymore? Suppose you have visiting there after some years and are showing it to your son, and say " Ahh, good old day! This is my ----. We used to live here, I have many good memories from here.":) – Soudabeh Apr 23 '16 at 18:31
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    Well, in some circumstances it would be "My parents' house." – Hot Licks Apr 23 '16 at 18:32
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    "My old home" is idiomatic and often used to mean 'the home I grew up (or spent a significant amount of time) in'; in context, it doesn't literally mean the home is old (that is relative). "The house I grew up in" is also fine. – anongoodnurse Apr 23 '16 at 18:48
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    "my childhood home" or "the house of my childhood". – Graffito Apr 23 '16 at 18:54
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    @Graffito, thanks, why don't you change your comment to a reply? :) – Soudabeh Apr 23 '16 at 19:15
  • "The house where I grew up" is what I'd say. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=house+where+I+grew+up&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chouse%20where%20I%20grew%20up%3B%2Cc0 – Elian Apr 23 '16 at 19:20
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    @Graffito You beat me to it. You should definitely include childhood home as an answer. – WS2 Apr 23 '16 at 19:28
  • Those terms you quote, motherland, fatherland, mother tongue, are not universal, but vary according to particular languages and ethnic cultures. In English the term fatherland is not much used. – WS2 Apr 23 '16 at 19:30
  • Your attempt to keep your question has invalidated Rathony's answer, which I think is unfair. Your original question was practically the same as the older one, it is now, after the edit, relatively different. – Mari-Lou A Apr 23 '16 at 19:47
  • The assumptions in your first sentence are wrong: some countries are motherlands and some fatherlands, but nobody has both. See Is it good practice to refer to countries using the feminine form?. – Tim Lymington Apr 23 '16 at 21:27
  • Tharavaad, we say in Malayalam, in south India. That is "childhood home" – NVZ Apr 23 '16 at 21:48
  • I think @ hatchet and others have probably covered the most common references. If I was visiting the house in the town where my family once lived, I would probably say "This was our family house/home". – Icy Apr 23 '16 at 21:50
  • What @Graffito said. – Drew Apr 23 '16 at 22:39
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    One does not compose general hypotheticals with If X would, then Y would. The first verb should be in the past, or with were to. – tchrist Apr 24 '16 at 01:20
  • Thanks for your remark, @tchrist. I didn't know that. I will edit it. :) – Soudabeh Apr 24 '16 at 01:27

3 Answers3

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Simply my childhood home (or "the house of my childhood").

Example: Lincoln was moved to write poetry after he returned to his childhood home in Hardin County, Kentucky, in 1846, when he was a thirty-seven-years-old Illinois lawyer.

Graffito
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5

I think family home fits what you're looking for. According to Google NGrams, it's more common than "childhood home".

Example: Hugh Jackman tweet "My family home growing up"

4

I don't think there is a suitable word for that other than my old place or house. However, The noun birthplace is broadly used to indicate the place where people were born and raised in early childhood, especially for those who are historically famous.

Abraham Lincoln's birthplace

George Washington's birthplace

[Source: National Park Service]

I think "the place where I was born (and raised when I was a child)" would be more idiomatic.

A side note: "Place of birth" is quite different from "birthplace" and you can visit the Wikipedia link and see the difference.