My Mother Tongue Essay

The language is defined as “human communication through the use of spoken or written words,” but that definition must include that language is also a cultural identity – “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is”. In other words, the language provides information about your roots; it is one of the most valuable resources to communicate with your mother culture.

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

Language is a very import part in our life, we carry it with us through all the steps, processes, moments experiences of our life, language built us and make us grow and the most important thing is that it grows with us, changes, modifies itself, and becomes more appropriate and specific. As we pointed out language help us to create and understand the world around us, gives meaning to everything and gives birth to emotions and feelings; a world without language would be meaningless and very lonely. Language it’s what help us grow up, the more we learn through it, the more we desire to experience and study in deep, leading us to new prospective, opening our mind to more specific and deep concepts, ideas, projects, goals. We really can’t

Amy Tan’s ,“Mother Tongue” and Maxine Kingston’s essay, “No Name Woman” represent a balance in cultures when obtaining an identity in American culture.  As first generation Chinese-Americans both Tan and Kingston faced many obstacles. Obstacles in language and appearance while balancing two cultures. Overcoming these obstacles that were faced and preserving heritage both women gained an identity as a successful American.

“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.

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

In Mother Tongue, we learn about the Amy Tan's love for language; specifically, the English language. Tan then introduces her conflict with her "mother tongue" and proper English and how this relates to her mother. Tan shows and explains how she rejects the idea that her mother's English is "in need of fixing" while explaining how she viewed English tests as subjective. She explains how she believes achievement tests can't capture things like "intent" and "passion" which is what she strives to capture in her writing. Tan explains that she now uses all the "Englishes" she's learned and that she strives to "preserve the essence" of her "mother tongue." The last line confirms that she has reached her writing goals of including all of the different forms of English into her novel as her mother says that the book that Tan had written was, "So easy to read."

Language is common in the world it is the way humans communicate and relate to things with one another.Language is a powerful tool in the world because it can give power to people and can be used to manipulate through renaming people,stereotyping a person and using a euphemistic approach in addressing a person.

In “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, she opens the story by informing us that she speaks more than one language. She states that she is a writer and she is someone who has always loved language. Throughout the story she explains the different situations that she experience because of the way she talks such as when she has to translate for her mother on the phone and how she talks proper when she is giving a speech. She feels as if her mother’s English “limits” her perception of her. She also states that at one point she was ashamed of her mother’s English. On the other hand, her mother’s English is perfectly clear to her and she describes it as her mother tongue.

In Amy Tan's article Mother Tongue, I found a familiar situation. I usually am around family and friends that speak Spanish firstly or only Spanish. I find myself sometimes resorting to the use of Spanglish—a mixture of Spanish and English—to explain things where I have forgotten words in Spanish. At the end of such conversations, I often realize that it would be easier if I use regular language instead of trying to “sound smart” using more sophisticated language. The article focuses on Tan's interpretation of her mother's "broken" English. Being Chinese-American, Tan writes on how she incorporates this "broken" English into her habitual writing after she realized she was giving a speech using "big" or elaborated words that her mother, who was in the audience, probably didn't understand. Tan further explains that the "brokenness" of her mother's English has everything to do with English not being her native language and nothing to do with ignorance.

What is the significance of language? Language is something that defines a person and what makes a person’s lifestyle so distinct. Language is something that is also oh so powerful, which is expressed in Tan’s essay and Silko’s essay. For example, in Tan’s essay, she reveals the upsetting emotion to which she feels because of how society perceives her mother based on her English language. As said in Tan’s essay, “It has always bothered me that I can think of

　　　　Language is an essential part of our daily lives. Language is used to communicate with other people to meet our needs and satisfy our understandings. Everyone uses one language or another. Some have an advantage and are able to use

Language is the universal connection that brings all humans together. We share this common ground to communicate. The three major points that I would like to focus on are: How does language influence our culture? Does it define us, or does it refine us? And lastly, the impact that language has on our societies.

First, the language variety that you speak as a native language is closely tied to the geographical identity. Because body language is also a part of language, which helps other people in the society identify an individual from others. To maintain respectful social standards in the society, a person is responsible in developing a self-identity that is unique from the others. Language is a key for everyone, a key that would aid in conforming to new society and new people. Without language, culture would not exist. “We pass ideas, knowledge, and even attitude on to the next generation” using language. Without the ability to communicate, knowledge from one

There are many bilingual and multicultural people in the world today. For many, the choices of which language they use, and how they use it, correspond to what social or cultural community they belong to. Amy Tan, a Chinese American novelist, portrays this well in her short essay "Mother Tongue." Tan grew up in two vastly different worlds, using different "Englishes." The first world, which consists of her close family, she speaks what we may call "broken" or "limited" English. The second world, which is her business and professional world, Tan speaks and writes perfect standard and academic English. Having to "shuttle" between these two communities with very different languages has had many different positive and negative effects on