Amy Tan Mother Tongue Analysis

In the work of Amy Tan’s “Mother’s Tongue” she provides a look into how she adapted her language to assimilate into American culture. She made changes to her language because her mother heavily relied on her for translation. She was the voice of her mother, relaying information in standard English to

In “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan an American writer, shares her experience growing up with the family where no one speaks perfect English, and how it affected her education and her life. As the second generation of Chinese immigrants, Tan faces more problems than her peers do. Her mother, who speaks limited English needs Tan to be her “Translator” to communicate with the native English speakers. Tan states, “I was ashamed of her English” (2). Her mother is like a burden to her, at least in Tan’s early years. But the cultural conflict she becomes the theme of her writing and it is under this situation she wrote many novels and essays including “Mother Tongue.”

Amy Tan’s literacy narrative “Mother Tongue” is about the different dialects of English, she is familiar with. She explains that her intelligence is judged by the way she speaks. Amy Tan, explains memories from her life where she encounters many forms of English. Her mother, a Chinese immigrant spoke “broken English.” She describes her mother as someone who was able to understand English, well the mother claims that she understands everything, but when it came to speaking, she spoke without the correct grammar. Due to her mothers broken English, Amy Tan has adapted to the type of English her mother speaks, their own type of English language. Tan feels as if the English she is speaking with it outside world is more complex than the English she

Mother Tongue is a story that describes how Amy Tan’s mother was treated unfairly because of her “broken English”. As the second generation of Chinese immigrants, Tan faces more problems than her peers do. Her mom, who speaks “limited” English, needs Tan to be her “translator” in order to communicate with the native English speakers. Tan has felt ashamed of her mother “broken” language at first. She then contemplates her background affected her life and her study. However, she changes her thought at the end since she realizes things behind language might be more valuable than language itself sometimes. Through the various different literary devices and rhetorical strategies such as the ethos, pathos, and logos appeals, as well as a

In Mother Tongue, Amy Tan talks about how language influenced her life while growing up. Through pathos she explains to her audience how her experiences with her mother and the Chinese language she came to realize who she wanted to be and how she wanted to write.

The purpose of Amy Tan’s essay, “Mother Tongue,” is to show how challenging it can be if an individual is raised by a parent who speaks “limited English” (36) as Tan’s mother does, partially because it can result in people being judged poorly by others. As Tan’s primary care giver, her mother was a significant part of her childhood, and she has a strong influence over Tan’s writing style. Being raised by her mother taught her that one’s perception of the world is heavily based upon the language spoken at home. Alternately, people’s perceptions of one another are based largely on the language used.

So naturally when I thought of this, I thought that her piece was about her language that she spoke at home or grew up with. The way I read her argument with this concept in mind, made me agree with what she was saying in her paper. However, some people may not have thought what I thought when reading her title. Others may have thought more literally and so thought the story was about something that maybe happened to her mother’s tongue. Another interpretation of the title could have depended on how the person interpreted the word “Mother”. Some might have thought more outside the box like I did and think that “Mother” was referring to a country; someone could then think this piece was talking about what the whole language speaks like English, German, Chinese, etc. Amy could have written the title to be more specific like “Languages growing up” or “The Broken English of My Mother’s” in order for the audience to have more of an idea of what the story was

Tan’s attitude towards her mother’s English begins with embarrassment and humiliation. Growing up in an immigrant family which speaks imperfect English, Tan witnesses many discriminations that her mother has encountered in department stores or at banks, those experiences help to shape Tan’s opinion to her mother’s English. For example, Tan states that “[she] was ashamed of [her mother’s] English. [She] believed that [her mother’s] English reflected the quality of what [her] mother had to say” (508). In young Amy’s opinion, her mother’s expressions and thoughts are broken and imperfect like the way she speaks, and she believes that linguistic expression is linked to a person’s intelligence. As a result, she was ashamed of her mother in public because of her fractured English.

Amy Tan, born February 19, 1952, was an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships and the Chinese-American experience. As a child Amy Tan believed her life was duller than most. She read to escape. Her parents wanted her to be a doctor or a concert pianist, however, she secretly dreamed of becoming an artist. She began writing fiction when she was thirty-three.

First of all, Amy Tan uses ethos to present the idea that social expectations must not negatively influence one's perception. She makes her argument by using rhetorical devices such as, “I wanted to capture what language ability tests could never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts”. She felt that standardized tests could not accurately determine a person’s intelligence. Amy Tan states how people have different ways of thinking and different types of intelligence. Therefore, it really is kind of unfair, for lack of a better term. Tan recalls all the English that she grew up with her mom, and what she was taught affected her life. Throughout the story, she describes her relationship with her mother, who speaks “broken” English, and how her perception of language has changed due to her mother. She also successfully manages to explain that language barriers in the U.S have limited amounts of success for non-English speaking residents. Because her "mother tongue" is the English she uses while she is in her first world, her

Amy Tan was born in 1952, in Oakland, California to Chinese immigrants John and Daisy Tan. Her family eventually settled in Santa Clara. When Tan was in her early teens, her father and one of her brothers died of brain tumors within months of each other. During this period Tan learned that her mother had been married before, to an abusive husband in China. After divorcing him, her mother fled China during the Communist takeover, leaving three daughters behind who she would not see again for nearly forty years.

The author realized that her mother’s form of English is one she automatically slips into when she is around her family, it is her “intimate” form of English. As Tan and her mother are looking in furniture stores and debating prices, she begins speaking to her mother using the “imperfect” English she grew up with. She states, “We are talking

Despite growing up amidst a language deemed as “broken” and “fractured”, Amy Tan’s love for language allowed her to embrace the variations of English that surrounded her. In her short essay “Mother Tongue”, Tan discusses the internal conflict she had with the English learned from her mother to that of the English in her education. Sharing her experiences as an adolescent posing to be her mother for respect, Tan develops a frustration at the difficulty of not being taken seriously due to one’s inability to speak the way society expects. Disallowing others to prove their misconceptions of her, Tan exerted herself in excelling at English throughout school. She felt a need to rebel against the proverbial view that writing is not a strong

Language as a combination of single words and different ideas affects us everyday in life. In the essay “Mother tongue” by Amy Tan, the author describes how her mother’s English influences her in her career and life that the “mother tongue” does not limit her as a writer, but shaped her and her perception on life instead. And her attitude to her mother’s English changes from the initial embarrassment to the final appreciation.

Amy Tan grew up to become a socially powerful young lady. However, Amy experienced several hardships throughout life that shaped Amy’s present personality. Previously, living in the United States, Amy had a troublesome time fitting into the American Society. In fact, in an interview with Elaine Woo, Amy admittedly told, “I felt ashamed of being different and ashamed for feeling that way.” Ashamed for partaking of the family’s Chinese heritage, Amy as a young girl was determined to appear as American as possible. In addition, Amy’s parents had elevated standards for Amy’s prosperity. Amy’s guardians concluded that Amy should be a full-time neurosurgeon and a part-time concert pianist. In the past, Amy Tan was once a person that took the advantage