Amy Tan Broken Language Summary

At first in her passage, she presents us her thoughts about English language. She realizes that when she is with other people her English is lot different than the ways she talks with her mother. Similarly, the way her mother talks to her and she would understand but when her mother talk to someone they wouldn’t understand her “broken” English. She tells us the different circumstances and struggles when her mother had been ignored for her English. One scenario, she recalls speaking on the phone, pretending to be her mother so that the stock broker would be understand what the problem was and the demanded for the overdue money. This demonstrates one person living of broken English requires another person speaking to peruse into fixing the situation.
To everyone else her mother’s broken language was considered useless and wouldn’t get her anywhere “Her language as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery.” Amy Tan is simply saying that because of her mother’s language barriers she was able to form who she is
today. She was able to see the ignorance in some people, and the patience and kindness in others. She was able to see how some people formed a prejudice against her mother and herself even though they did not speak the English language as accurately as other Americans did.
Continuing, Tan mentions in her essay about her mother’s English as “broken English” because tan’s mother cannot speak English fluently.
Since tan’s mother cannot speak English fluently, they have developed a special language to communicate. This showed Tan that speaking in a different language with her mother caused problem for her in normal conversations When Tan was young, her mother would make her talk to different people so the problem or the situation could be handled more clearly. After dealing with her diverse mother, Tan believes that language spoken in families, especially immigrant families, plays a huge role in creating a language for children and it will affect their lives in the future. Tan mentions Asian students being good in math and science but are skilled in English. Tan says that this has to do with culture because in chines culture, children are always introduced to math and science very well but are discouraged when it comes to English. Tan also points out that as child with immigrants’ parents; her English was limited due to her mother’s culture and broken
English.

Ongoing, she tries to draw the readers understanding that one who speaks different can draws another person attention away. To everyone else her mother’s broken language was considered useless and wouldn’t get her anywhere. Likewise, in the story Tan states: her mother had been diagnosed with a benign brain tumor and when she went to the doctor's office, the CAT scan was lost and no one seemed concerned with her need to understand her prognosis—having lost a husband and son, both to brain tumors. When her daughter came to translate her mother’s broken English everyone was much more amiable with Amy than they had been with her mother: promises were made and apologies were graciously bestowed. In both cases, the perception based on her mother's "limited" English gave people the idea that Amy's mother wasn't very bright, or worse, was not worth their time. The reason they treated Mrs. Tan in such disrespectful manner was because she spoke a non-native variation of English.