Mother Tongue Essay

There are both positive and negative aspects of learning a language, but people are likely to equalize two sides and try not to lose the relationships with their family and the society. Amy Tan, in “Mother Tongue” and Richard Rodriguez in “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” explain how they viewed their private and public languages through their experiences and how they managed these two languages and established themselves in the society. Tan initially felt ashamed of her private language and favored the public language; however, in the end she showed that she could manage the balance between the languages and finally utilized both in public. On the other hand, Rodriguez preferred his private language which made him feel comfortable;

Demetria Martínez’s Mother Tongue is divided into five sections and an epilogue. The first three parts of the text present Mary/ María’s, the narrator, recollection of the time when she was nineteen and met José Luis, a refuge from El Salvador, for the first time. The forth and fifth parts, chronologically, go back to her tragic experience when she was seven years old and then her trip to El Salvador with her son, the fruit of her romance with José Luis, twenty years after she met José Luis. And finally the epilogue consists a letter from José Luis to Mary/ María after her trip to El Salvador. The essay traces the development of Mother Tongue’s principal protagonists, María/ Mary. With a close reading of the text, I argue how the forth

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

“Mother Tongue” was a speech Amy Tan made in front of many authoritative scholars who had investigated English literature for long time. Tan perhaps had great pressure for the experience she talked about is not familiar at all to those experts. They wouldn’t understand easily how someone from an immigrant family felt. Later the speech became a well-known essay of Tan and the audience changed. She was talking to everybody, especially the ones who speak perfect English. She wanted them to know that one with limited English could still be intelligent. Things behind language might be more valuable than language itself sometimes. That was something exceeded fluency, vocabularies and grammar. Amy Tan’s purpose of writing Mother Tongue is to remind the native English speakers to respect the “broken English” speakers and to find out the worthy thoughts concealed by the imperfect languages.

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

On the other hand the main focus on Tan’s story is to show the beautiful and passionate side of her mother that people can't see. Tan describes how all of the English’s that she grew up with, normal English and "mother tongue" English, has shaped her first outlook of life. She writes, "But to me, my mother's

4. Considerer the expression Mother Tongue in Tan’s title. This expression usually refers to the first language learned at home in childhood. In this case, I think it has a literally meaning, it refers to her mother tongue in specific.

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.

She had to keep all these English’s separate because each was like its own language. If Amy were to mix them, it would become confusing and wouldn’t have made sense to her or her mother as they had grown accustomed to this language and communication. One language was the English she spoke to her mother. Amy had to simplify her English when speaking to her mother; Amy would speak the basic ideas of what she was trying to say to make it easier for her mother to comprehend. For example she said, “Not waste money that way” to her mother one day; she would even say this to her husband because it was routine to her to do so. When she made a speech once, she felt as if the way she was speaking was wrong because her mother was in the audience. A second English language to Amy was how her mother used English with her. Tan describes her mother’s English as “broken” or “fractured” language. This type of English affected Tan greatly; she said it limited her possibilities in life and also affected her performances in school when she took achievements tests, IQ tests, and the SAT because it limited her language skills. Another type of language that she grew up with was Amy’s translation of her mother’s Chinese. She described it as “watered down” and yet sometimes she would grow in confidence when she was on the phone with people because of this. However, later her self-esteem would lower because of

The essays, "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan and "Public and Private Language" by Richard Rodriguez are recollections of both of the author’s personal encounters and difficulties with the gap that was created between their families by differences in languages. These two writers grew up with bilingual families, in which English was not the primary language. Consequently, they had a hard time accepting and understanding the issues surrounding the different languages they spoke with their families at home, and within society. Because of this, the gap between their public and private languages that had been created through the introduction of a second language slowly grew larger, and eventually impacted their relationships with their family and caused them to view them in a different light. In their writing, Both Tan and Rodriguez reflect on their personal experiences and memories and illuminate the effects that a private language can have on various aspects of life.

English is an invisible gate. Immigrants are the outsiders. And native speakers are the gatekeepers. Whether the gate is wide open to welcome the broken English speakers depends on their perceptions. Sadly, most of the times, the gate is shut tight, like the case of Tan’s mother as she discusses in her essay, "the mother tongue." People treat her mother with attitudes because of her improper English before they get to know her. Tan sympathizes for her mother as well as other immigrants. Tan, once embarrassed by her mother, now begins her writing journal through a brand-new kaleidoscope. She sees the beauty behind the "broken" English, even though it is different. Tan combines repetition, cause and effect, and exemplification to emphasize

As an adult, Tan understands that her mother’s English is the language of intimacy. She now understands that her “mother’s expressive command belies how much she actually understands” Her mother reads “The Wall street Journal” and converses with their stockbroker on matters Tan doesn’t comprehend. It becomes evident that her initial

This dialect, Tan says, became their "language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language [she] grew up with" (Tan 589). This type of language creates an identity for Tan, one which she was ashamed of growing up. This feeling of shame later backfired as an adult in her fiction writing. She wrote to prove she had "mastery over the English language" with large words, unheard of to the common ear, and sentences she thought were "wittily crafted." But as Tan matured, she realized she should envision an audience for her stories; this audience was her mother. She began to write stories using "all the Englishes" she grew up with. As she found out, this change of her own conception of language enriched her writing and added to her ethos. After all, her mother’s language, as she heard it, was "vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery." "That was the language that had helped shaper the way [she] saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world" (Tan 590). Her "mother tongue" is her identity as a writer, and she learned that someone’s English does not reflect the quality of what he/she has to say.