Everybody can have limits in anything. Sometimes the limitations comes in the shape of not being able to talk the right way, not being able to keep up with other children in the same age and lots more. All of that is explained in one sentence Amy Tan wrote. The title of her article is '' Mother Tongue'' and it was in 1990. The main purpose of her article is to show that there are a lot of people that want to learn a new language but face difficulties with their families as the family don't talk that language very well. As Tan said, she describe the language that parents speak as broken. Putting yourself in other people's shoes or difficulties is consider the main idea. Judging people from one thing that they can't do is something that…
We all have the same capacity for language, but God divided us up to separate the amount of foolishness we will try to get away with. Even when you speak the same language, people still get wires crossed, half hear a message, or misunderstand what was being said or even seen. People still see, say, and interpret basic information differently.…
Mother Tongue In this passage the author Amy Tan talks about the different ways people speak in America, as an example she uses herself and her mother, she tells us that one time she was giving a speech in front of a large group and she was using all this big words, and phrases like she had learned in school, but all of a sudden she remember her mother was in the audience and she started to think her speech was bad and all her words were wrong because it was an English she never spoke with her mom, because she explains to us that the English her moms speaks is very broken and very bad because of her Chinese roots, as an example she gives us a paragraph describing a story her mom told her once about a gangster that wanted to join her family, she also tells us that when she was younger she was very ashamed of her mothers broken English, which I think is very funny because I know a lot of people that go threw that problem, and hate going places were their parents have to speak English, luckily for me I didn’t encounter that problem because my mother grew up in Kansa City and learned English at a very young age, so her English has been very good all threw my childhood, the bad part was that since she knew perfect English she was able to communicate with my teachers…
The author believes that language likes an invisible wall that prevents her mother from getting respect from the others. “The fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her”(765). This is how the others treat the author’s mother as well as non-native English speakers. Therefore, Amy Tan understands that there are a lot of immigrants who have been like her mother: being disregarded due to limited use of English. In addition, Amy Tan’s main point of the article is letting the audience know that the way of speaking language cannot reflect someone’s competency. The second point the author tries to say that language is not just language itself; it is about culture, background, and…
by some linguists as “broken English.” However, inability to speak a language does not reflect…
Analyze one of the characters in Sunset Boulevard. Think about their femininity/masculinity/gender by using essays on queer gender relations in Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. How does Sunset Boulevard connect with Hollywood, je t’aime? Use detailed examples, and make a clear argument based on close analysis of Gender Outlaws and the films’ formal features.…
Amy Tan discusses the different “Englishes” she uses depending on the situations she is in. For instance she uses “broken” or “limited” English when she talks to her mother or sometimes to her husband. On the contrary she uses proper English when she is giving a speech to a crowd. She mentions the importance of the words in the article by saying, “power of language -- the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a…
Being judged based on surface level qualities can make anyone feel unwelcomed and looked down upon. Someone might even be treated with less respect because of the way they talk or pronounce a certain language. In the article "Mother Tongue," Amy Tan describes her relationship with her mother, who speaks "broken" English that essentially, isn’t broken at all. She shares her stories about the struggles of growing up with a mother who spoke imperfect English and the prejudice she received in turn for it. However, Tan didn’t let her mother’s “limited” English bring her down; instead she used it in her own personal narratives to tell a meaningful story. She conveys the theory that people’s intelligence should not be judged based on how well they speak a language. People don’t deserve the prejudice they receive for speaking differently and should ignore the loathing and set higher standards for themselves to go further in life than ever imagined before.…
Language is speaked in many forms. Some people may grow up learning one language but choose to speak another and others might simply grow up speaking only one language. As Chinese myself, I have been speaking Chinese for my whole life. My first language was Chinese and although I’ve learned to speak Japanese and English throughout my childhood, however, Chinese have become one of the most common languages I speak daily. Similar to me, my parents also prefer to speak Chinese although they’ve been living in America for the past ten years. They are not exactly so called American, but they have gotten use to the life style in America that they understand nearly perfect English. But my parents still speak to me in Chinese when I call them to ask about their days. They tell me about their work, their days, their lives in Chinese and they speak to their friends to their native language. One time I got curious and I tried to have a conversation with them in English. They started alright, speaking English with their deep Chinese accent, but before I realized it, it turned into Chinese conversation. I asked them the reason behind this logic and they told me that it’s because they couldn’t seem to find the right English words. I wondered for a second what this meant and I finally realized that it’s because they are not familiar with English language like they are with Chinese. Although they have been living in America for a long time and have mastered English language, they choose to speak Chinese freely because they feel…
In Amy Tan’s essay “Mother Tongue” (1990), she emphasize that her mother’s way of speaking English has created a cultural wall. Tan used truth from her life and her mother’s personal experiences to express how society treats people who speak poor English. Tan’s purpose was to encourage the reader not to prejudge a person who speaks imperfect English and in spite of how the individual speak, they should be treated the same way as the person who speaks perfect English. Tan’s anticipated audience was anyone who’s been judge or mistreated because of their imperfect English and anyone who judged or look down on a person that speaks imperfect English.…
There are multiple situations in which language discrimination occurs. Situations include work, school, vacation spots, and in the general public. The workplace is supposed to be free of any type of discrimination but it is not. People are discriminated against if they speak different or even remotely act differently than what we experience inside the walls of our community. School kids are picked on by other kids if they are a different nationality, this being because they speak different languages and are trying to learn the English language. Tourists on vacation trying to enjoy their stay are constantly pressed with the fact that next to nobody around them knows their native language providing a barrier of communication. The general public tends to look down on a person if they have a speech impediment or an accent even if they are still natives of the United States. They are made to look like tourists in a nation of their own.…
The North American river otter (lontra Canadensis), also known as they river otter, are small semi-aquatic mammals commonly found in the North American continent along the waterways and coasts. River otters have existed for a very long time. Archeologists have discovered fossils that date back as old as 200 B.C. Otters body form have remained unchanged for 30 million years. They have gone under slow subtle evolutionary changes over that time period, but have retained the same body shape.…
Yet, many people use language to evaluate people. They think that people who can’t speak perfect English will people who can’t think perfectly. Her mother is treated disrespectful by a stockbroker, who doesn’t really pay attention on what she needs. Whereas, with Tan saying perfect English, the stockbroker does the work quickly. The hospital that gives her mother a CAT scan doesn’t apologize for the lose of the result until Tan talks with the doctor.…
Immigrants may feel forced to learn English in order for them to succeed, creating a strong distaste for the language. Thus, English can threaten the dignity of speakers, perhaps because people care a lot about their heritage language, and strongly identify with it. Following this logic, many immigrants either have never fully mastered the English language or feel humiliation in having to learn it. (Stiltz, 2015; Winland,…
In “Mother Tongue” (1990) an essay written by Amy Tan, a Chinese-American author who has written a lot of beautiful novels, Tan argues that all languages have a purpose and value. Tan tells us how every language has a purpose by giving us examples from her own life, specifically, she talks about the way her and her mother talked; her mother wasn’t very fluent in English, but the little English she could speak she could say smart and brilliant things like, “ . Tan uses personal examples in order to make us believe in the importance of language. The people she directs this story to is to people who grew up in English homes from birth to see just because someone doesn’t talk perfect English doesn’t mean they don’t know things, they do have brilliant…