My mother spoke in normal Trini dialogue, so I would constantly hear phrases such as “Do not cut you nose to patch you bottom” and “If you see you neighbor house catch fire wet yours”. To some of my friend my mother had no idea what she was talking about and should maybe work on her English, but to me she spoke clear and understandable English. I can relate to Tan in this way, because many people did not understand her mother and assumed her grasp on English was very weak, when it was actually the opposite. Over the years, I have noticed how my mother’s dialogue has rubbed off on me. I constantly find myself speaking in the island dialogue while at home, but the second someone calls or visits, I am able to switch into a more proper English dialogue with my American friends.
Dear Gloria Anzaldua, You have wrote such a mind capturing passage that it has led us to want to know more about you and the struggles of growing up at a time where your race was not accepted by all. In the essay “How to Tame A Wild Tongue” you said “I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess- that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler.” (Anzaldua 2947) Did it affect you as a child having to hide your heritage and who you truly were from everyone else?. Also, considering how in your passage what you mostly wrote about how your culture meant a lot to you. Considering all the different forms of your culture did that affect you mentally as a child know that you could not express yourself in the form in which you wanted and if you did you would be judged by your peers or would be disciplined by your teachers. You talked about all the different types of Mexican cultures, was there any in
By that meaning, when Amy Tan was a kid, she saw how her mother had difficulties in the society because the lack of communication. Therefore, when she grew up, she learned English in the right and correct way and became a successful writer. This is similar to a time when I was in her situation, I was ashamed of my parents broken English wherever they go, I had to speak for them; their limited English reflected the quality of what they had to say. That is because they weren’t able to express their thoughts, the correct way and nobody was taking them seriously, it was because of their broken English language, they were not getting good services
While she was receiving standard English education in school, she also mastered her family’s different “Englishes”, which were created by her mom, a native speaker of Chinese. Tan begins her essay with the disclaimer that she is “not a scholar” of the English language, despite the truth that she actually is, to tell that she is going to present “mother tongue” with her personal experiences. In fact, Tan’s opinions of non-standard English do cast doubt on those of linguists’. Tan has concerns about the kind of English her mother speaks because she noticed that the English she uses in public is totally different from the English she uses with her mom. Here, Tan provides a video of what her mother said during a recent conversation as an example of what “mother tongue” looks like.
Even though Akeelah feels protected and accepted around her coach and other former spelling bee friends she still gets mocked by her classmates and even her own mother is against her goal for the spelling bee. Her mother had issues dealing with her husband passing away and her one of Akeelahs brothers out on the streets doing bad things. Akeelah fights threw her afterschool activity and homework at the same time. Akeelah later finds her life revolved around the spelling bee. She slowly starts not doing her main
The fact that they are talking about doing away with the programs in all is what I find to be, quite shocking seeing as I took Spanish growing up. They call it the Anti Bilingual movement, but some states such as Texas and Arizona are refusing to participate and are keeping with teaching children a second language as to further their skills in life. As it says in the article, Education is a long term process and involves more than just the English
Her journey starts with her childhood and progresses through learning her mother’s English, to English in school and concludes with her becoming a writer. Tan grew up the child of Chinese immigrants. Her mother spoke, what Tan refers to as, “broken” English. As a child, she found herself ashamed of the way her mother spoke. This “broken” English limited even Tan’s own perception of her mother; she believed her mother’s imperfect English meant that her mother’s ideas and thoughts must be imperfect as well.
Novelist Amy Tan (Libi Pedder / Camera Press / Retna) Tan proves her point about parents’ influence on people’s life when she states “I think my mother’s English almost had an effect on limiting my possibilities in life as well”. By talking about how her mother’s English lacked a certain wholeness and clarity, she explains why her thoughts about her mother tongue were different when she was a child; “I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say.” People in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants didn’t take her mother seriously, didn’t give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they didn’t hear her. Here Tan emphasizes the importance of mother tongue in somebody’s life. She believes that people may not be treated respectfully because of their poor speaking of any language. She never reflects on her mother’s difficulties as something that could’ve motivated her to become a writer.
She pointed out that mother tongue could affect everyone one of us, just like how she is affecting her husband without noticing. Her husband is not aware of the change of English form and the ‘weirdness’ of this form of English that they used to communicate among their family and the kind of English that she grew up with. It may be misunderstood by others, but to Amy, this type of English is perfectly clear and natural because this is her mother tongue. Her mother tongue is not a barrier in her ability to learn this English language, besides, she consider her mother tongue to be vivid, direct and full of observation and imagery which helped her to shape her way of seeing and expressing things, and to look at this world in a different way. People may consider her mother tongue to be ‘broken’ or ‘fractured’, or in another way they consider them as ‘limited English’, where people tend to relate limited English and limited perception together.
It is clear that whilst Scout is willing to provide informal educational help, Miss Caroline does not approve of this and repeatedly tries to scupper her efforts by whipping her on the first day of school because she misunderstood, “if I didn’t have…stop it”(page 24). Further reinforcement is shown when Miss Caroline catches Scout writing a letter to Dill because she was bored, “I was bored, so I began…third grade”(page24). Miss Caroline is trying to follow a more formal way of teaching pupils in a place where teaching and education is regarded as experienced based, learn through doing, which inevitably means that knowledge is passed down generations and is limited to those skills needed to survive. Education during the 1930s were only aimed at boys rather than girls.