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Amy Tan Mother Tongue Analysis

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Amy Tan Mother Tongue Analysis
Essay #1
There are so many different forms of English that are used on the daily basis that we unknowingly switch up on. Some are based on the people that we are around and others are in the area or even situation that we may be in. we rarely notice when we change from one form to another. In Amy Tan’s article “Mother tongue” she shows how her mother’s unique English led her to go through many trials and obstacles and was overlooked by many. In this essay, I will show how some of the issues that Amy Tan talks about in her article can be applied to my everyday life and is still very relevant.
Peer pressure is a major factor in communication with other people and overseen, why would we even switch the way we talk with one person to another
…show more content…
it’s harder to just be yourself and interact with people when you may look and talk differently than most, even family. Nowadays many people think that you cannot succeed in life if you do not talk and present yourself in a certain way, viewed as simple and uneducated, and I agree there is a time and place for everything but just because I do not converse in Standard English all the time doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be qualified to write a formulated essay, get a good job or even have a simple intellectual conversation with another person. Amy Tan states that her mother was mistreated and wasn’t taken seriously on multiple occasions because she spoke broken English and had to step in all the time in order for her mother to be taken seriously. Tan disliked the words “broken” or “fractured” English it made her mother look as if she …show more content…
Most of my family members are older and communicate this way on a regular basis so not only did I pick up on it unknowingly but can relate to what they are saying. Going back to social media, there are many different audiences that read or even see my post, so it’s not really appropriate to use that form, many people automatically assume that your illiterate and do not know how to write which is why I try to refrain from using it. I am from Baltimore where many say we have a whole language by itself, pronouncing many words without its vowels and sometimes skipping a small chunk of the word itself. The proper term would be Baltimorese but there are multiple ways many people can call it. I would be lying if I say that I haven’t been told that I have a funny accent or even say many words completely different than others on more than one occasion. I automatically picked up on this form of English just by being from Baltimore and never realized that I talked differently from family or friends that grew up elsewhere like Texas or South Carolina where they have a very different

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