Tanya’s parents did this because they wanted her to fit into this, “red, white and blue world.”(pg 8) They wanted her to be able to speak the English language without a hint of the Spanish accent. Her parents said that by doing so people would look past the ethnicity and only see an American girl. Tanya tries to relate with her audience by speaking a bit of Spanish in her essay. Some of the words she uses are Latinos, ingles, and gringa. By using these words she can relate to both the American and Latino audiences, while also showing her knowledge of the Spanish language.
Mother’s Tongue vs. Public Language Richard Rodriguez and Amy Tan, both writers, talk about their experiences with non-American backgrounds living in America. In both of their essays "Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood" by Rodriguez, and "Mother Tongue" by Tan, are very similar in that they both emphasize the importance of language and describes how it affected their lives. Both Rodriguez and Tan stress the importance of their family's language. Tan expresses two major issues; how language has impacted both her and her mother's lives and the different English's she uses towards her mother and others. Similarly, Rodriguez explains how language has affected him and his family's lives and the transition from Spanish to English.
Analysis of Se Habla Espanol David S English 115 In her essay Se Habla Espanol, Tanya Barrientos talks about her struggle with growing up in America speaking only English. She discusses how she has struggled with both fitting into the American culture, and how also how she doesn’t fit into the Latin-American culture either. Tayna has two main audiences intended for this essay. Her primary audience is any people who find themselves in a similar situation. She seems to want to help them feel its okay to not fit in either group perfectly.
She does this by using Spanish words that people may not understand and by using an unorganized, random structure to confuse the reader. It is clear that Anzaldua was strongly against assimilating into American culture and becoming Americanized; she wants to keep the Chicano culture alive. Her parents, however, wanted her to do things the American way so that she could pursue the American Dream and make something of herself; therefore her parents often scolded her for speaking Spanish in school. Anzaldua’s ideal reader needs to be able to sympathize with her and to have an open mind. In order to make the reader meet these qualifications, Anzaldua tries to confuse and frustrate the reader by using language that is difficult to understand in the form of excerpts from poems, a muddled structure, and confusing
Amy Tan Final Exam In “My Mother’s English” by writer Amy Tan, we learned that her perception on her mother’s English had evolved over-time. As a writer Amy Tan feels that language is her way or tool of getting a point across, she even uses “All the English she grew up with”, meaning the fractured English her mother taught her. Tan says, “It is the sort of English that is our language of Intimacy, the English that relates to family talk, and the English that I grew up with”. Tan’s main point is that even though her mother speaks what some would call broken English, to her it’s beautiful to other “English speakers” it is abnormal. I think that her mother has been labeled or stereotyped.
But while writing her first novel she realized that Her culture and her background made her the writer and gave her the language she speaks today. Baldwin mentions the fact that we owe some of the Standard English language to the black form of English, which was derived from old clack culture. Tan’s Argument also includes many examples that have to do with how language and power relate to each other. She begins her article by mentioning that she is not an English Scholar, but she does take pride in her writing and often thinks of the power of language (178). She backs up this statement with an example, “My mother has long realized the limitations of her English as well.
The poem “Legal Alien” is about a woman of Mexican parents, who is born and raised in America. An American citizen established by law, but at the same time this person feels like an illegal alien because of how some people treat her. She is fluent in both, English and in Spanish. Feels American because she is, but at the same time she doesn’t. She is looked at by Americans (Anglos) as inferior, and looked at by Mexicans like she doesn’t belong.
Word Count: 1399 Firoozeh Dumas argues how difficult it is for an immigrant with a foreign name to live in America in “The F Word.” The author describes her past troubles with having the Iranian name of Firoozeh. Children and adults alike pronounce it incorrectly and cause embarrassment and confusion. Dumas decided to start calling herself Julie in an effort to prevent inconvenience on the part of American tongues. Foreign names make immigrants feel alienated among a nation with names along the lines of Joe, Mary, Dave, Steve, and Sarah. Americans have become more willing to learn a foreign name.
I personally feel that as a American born citizen, all immigrants need to learn English. This is an English speaking country and yes Spanish is a great thing to know, it is not up to the American people to be able to communicate with people that weren’t even born here. If I was to move to Mexico and live there, it would be very hard for me to communicate with the citizens of that country. It would be crucial for me to learn the Spanish language because that is what the Mexican community expects. They would not learn English and use it as a primary language when Spanish has been theirs for years.
Anzaldua responds with the statement, “Attacks on one’s form of expression with the intent to censor are a violation of the First Amendment” (pg. 77). This clearly displays her displeasure to the suppression of her native language, which she experienced when growing up. Anzaldua continues into her next section, ‘Overcoming the Tradition of Silence’, to discuss how she, as a female, use to be taught to be kept silent as part of her culture. She notes that none of the rules she was taught she heard of being applied to men.