The Idea of Language Mislead in the Article “Mother Tongue”
“Mother Tongue” is the title of an article written by the author named Amy Tan is about the various forms of the English language that she has used and continues to use throughout her life. Amy has described the different types of English’s she uses, the one she uses when she is having a conversation with her mother and then the one that she uses when she starts writing. She went through many details about the challenges that her and her mother both faced because of these differences.
I belief that Amy’s goal in this article was to present to the public that just because an individual does not have or speak “perfect” English, it does not mean that the person is not intellectual. Being that her mother used a more simplified form of English, she was exposed to this and other forms of the English language, so it was easy for her to go back and forth and understand them
Amy Tan wants to present her position and belief in a rational and effective way. Her purpose of “mother Tongue” is to explain how the various languages that she has used with her mother were important and influential in her life.
Being a person who grew up around Arabic speaking relatives and friends, I’ve grown to accept that everyone is different. Some were born in the U.S. while others came here from another country. Those who came from another country aren’t going to know the same language as who grew up in the US, and if they do, it will be “broken” English. I was able to relate myself to Amy Tan’s essay titled “Mother Tongue.” Amy Tan’s mother grew up knowing Chinese, but living in the United States, she had to learn English. Her English was difficult to understand because she was missing words when she’d speak. Her daughter, Amy, classified her English as being “broken” because it wasn’t completely like others.
I find it interesting because even through all the challenges they faced, Amy continued to see her mother English as she always had, clear and natural. She supports this by saying “Her language, as I hear it, its vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery.” Further reinforcing my claim of how her mother’s version is what she had been taught and how she grew to understand it. She then states, “This was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world.” Coming from a family that immigrated here from I agree with Amy, dealing with family members struggling to speak the proper way, but in the end, I felt their version was better than the “proper” English we are taught in school, being that it was more colorful.
The author is no genius or scholar when it comes down to English, but she loves language. She is interested in all kinds of language and how it influences everything. She has the ability to talk proper English and sound smart, but when she’s around her husband and mother she unconsciously goes back to speaking how she spoke when she was a kid. The authors mother has it really bad. She talks very improper. It’s very frustrating trying the decipher what she’s saying sometimes. Some people understand her, but some people does not understand her at all. On the other hand, her daughter understands her fine, because she grew up to her mom’s voice. Her voice helped her understand the world.
