I think that her mother has been labeled or stereotyped. Also I believe that stereotyping is wrong. For instance, when Tan states, “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”. Amy Tan speaks in a “variation of languages like academic, a language she does not use at home, but uses when conversing with others outside her family or in her books”. Tan also uses“different English with her family (mother /husband) that she grew up with”.
In the essay, “Mother Tongue,” by Amy Tan emphasizes the idea that we all speak different languages unconsciously and also we are categorized by the way we speck. In the essay Tan observes experiences that made her realized the different types of “Englishes” she uses. The first time she became aware was when giving a talk about her book, “The Joy Club,” she saw her mother in the audience and she realized that she had been using academic language learned from books, a language she had never used with her mother. The second time she noticed one of her “Englishes” was when talking with her mother and husband, she said “not waste money that way” which for her is an intimate language used only by her family. Tan emphasizes that fact that her mother recognizes her opportunities and interaction in life are limited by her English.
For example, "It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language I grew up with" (397). Tan is so used to hearing her mother talk in a "Broken" (398) English, which she does not seem to notice much of a difference between broken English and clear English. She grew up listening to her mother talk this way and has gotten used to it. This way when Tan and her mother talk it is how their family talks, their own special way they communicate to one another. Rodriguez shares this same family quality like Tan and her mother’s language.
Amy Tan explores the idea of variable language in her short essay Mother Tongue. Tan is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She grows up watching her parents, especially her mother, struggle with learning the English language. While her mother does gain skill in speaking the English language, she never masters language in the sense that we expect of someone who lives in an English speaking country. As a child, Tan is embarrassed by her mother’s difficulty in language and eventually she sees growing up the child of an Asian immigrant home as the reason she struggled in school to excel in reading and writing.
63), it states she watched “Three’s Company” in an attempt to learn English. When she was 13, she had to take public transportation to and from school for the first time instead of being driven to her destinations by a chauffeur. The school system was even different as she states “Unlike students in Korea schools, who were taught to bow to teachers at every turn…..” (pg 62) in Queens they barely made eye contact. She also had to learn to do her school work by herself as well has regular house hold chores such as washing clothes. These are some of the changes that she had to make to adjust to her new way of living as a middle class teenager, since she was no longer rich.
It created a very respectful side of her and she developed a skill of turning small opportunities into life lessons. She was raised in a Vietnamese only speaking family. This was great because she learned how to communicate with her family but it became a problem when she started school and began to learn English. Growing up in a family that only knew how to speak a foreign language slowed and limited her abilities to improve her English vocabulary and grammar. Throughout her elementary and middle school years, she excelled in school due to the push of her parent.
An In-Deep Understanding of “Mother Tongue” In the essay “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan accomplishes in three things simultaneously: she appeals the audiences emotionally by providing the pictures of the experiences between her mother and her; she shows the struggle of cultural racism that her mother and she go through without pointing out directly; and she puts some odd things into the essay and make it expressive. Amy Tan’s essay is very successful because she writes in her personal and “easy to read” style. Without the special English she uses in her writing, we may not easily understand and accept her ideas. Tan writes about that she has grown up with using different kinds of English: the English she learned in school and she uses in public, and the English she uses in speaking with her mother, which is described as the “broken” English. Moreover it comes to her sense that language is not only a communication tool but also an essential thing in enabling individuals to define their identities.
When Students Are Parents In this essay “When Student Are Parents”, Monique Rizer narrates her challenging experience. She emphasizes obstacle that faced and the responsibility that she had as student and new mother by using her own experience. Also, she stated that with the right resources and attitude, parents can pursue higher education. At the beginning she describes feeling out of place and uncomfortable on campus “Crammed behind my desk, I fidgeted and shifted my eyes to observe the other students in the room. I tried not to look the way I felt- like I didn’t belong there with them.” Also, she narrates difficulties that she faced after high-school graduation.
Now there are 150 deaf people in this community the second generation now in their thirties and forties. What does the text have to do with you personally (past, present or future)? When my sister was little and just learning how to talk she would make up her own words for things or say some words not quite right. So me and my family learned what she was saying and understood her most of the time but people who didn’t spend time with her couldn’t understand what she said a lot of the time and we would have to translate for her. I think how the brain works is very interesting and this research could show what happens to the brain when it has to make a language out of nothing.
Mother Tongue Using English as second languages are very common everywhere in most countries now. As an international student, learning how to speak English become necessary. We are force to use English in the right way to can communicate with others in the environment we are living in. In my case, I used to live with my mother in California during high school. We never speak English to each other.