Mother Tongue and Me

Amy Tan : Mother Tongue

Daniel Palma

We’ve all been there as a bilingual child with a parent who can only speak your native language. If this is the case then your parents tend to have a severe case of ‘limited english’ also referred to as ‘broken english’, symptoms include speaking english with broken grammar, dialect intermingled with your native dialect and accents which may or may not sound intimidating. Basically am off in a tangent to describe how racially separated the foreign group and the english speaking community really is.

In this case I’ll use Asians to support my backing. Asians or non-english speakers, for some reason don't have an expectation on how english should be spoken or rather the expectation is too high. What Amy Tan discusses in her essay mentions on  the limitations and her perception on her mother's english, it describes her mother being ashamed of her english, in which she can't speak efficiently, using her daughter to make calls with the ‘assumption’ of sounding more proper and to be taken seriously “My mother has long realized the limitations of her english as well” -- “she used to have me call people on the phone to pretend I was she”. This sheds light on generalized stereotypical assumptions, it's evident if you're receiving a phone call from a person who barely speaks an efficient amount english their assumptions are that he/she is uneducated or is below you, thus a sudden need to belittle the conversation.

Amy Tan refers to education to stimulate her english speaking prowess in relation to maths and other forms of education. Another racial stereotype in which the profound millennials would say, ‘not all asians are good at maths and if you assume so you’re racist’. In Amy Tan context she faces a conflict in which her parents influencing her english at young age, cultural impacts on the language collides with fundamental english, in her young age she lived with the chinese culture. What her culture deems as fundamentally correct in their language is sometimes wrong in english, different phrase are exclaimed in their language but cannot be transcribed in english, thus students who tend to cater their attention to math and more literate subjects rather than interpretive like majority of the english lessons. Amy Tan mentions how this limitation affected her standardized testing “I believed that it affected my results on achieve tests.” mentioning later on “I wanted to capture what language ability test can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech” obviously mentioning and referring to her previous statement, english is universal and interpretations are bound to happen, thus making it simplistic, simplistic enough to bring forth emotions and integral needs which test can not determine.

To conclude, english is a very thriving language, in order to become a more successful individual it is imperative that we learn english but as foreign speakers it's difficult to gain the ability of speaking english, in cultural standpoint. Given how a specific culture is embezzled to you and cultural differences start to make learning difficult. Amy Tan gives a literal example of how it is to be bilingual and the struggles inflicted to her parents.