Amy Tan Mother Tongue Summary

864 Words4 Pages
“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan is an about a lady who make her judgments on how “broken language is compared to standard English. She addresses how language is just not a tool of communication but can also be at tool for sociological measuring individual worth. She goes on to tell us the problems her mother faces as an adult. Growing up she realizes something unusual about languages. She seems to think the way her mother speak English was somewhat broken. Some people think that the way her mother speaks English, she might not understand but she understood more than people actually thought. But because of the way she spoken others will discriminate against her Linguistic prejudice has been going on since 1980’s and it is discrimination towards people base solely on their use of language. The use of…show more content…
The way he spoke would be recognized as Broken English. Just like Amy mother in “Mother Tongue” was recognize for on how she spoke. Amt Tan said, “You should know that my mother's expressive command of English belies how much she actually understands.” Just because the words that was coming out of my uncle mouth was clear to others doesn’t mean he didn’t understand the language well. He understood it well enough to read and understand things I didn’t know and I speak English well. The only people could understand my uncle is those who actually took the time too and of course me and my family didn’t recognize his struggle to speak at times. This made me think of what Amy Tan said, “Yet some of my friends tell me they understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It's my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and
Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Mother Tongue By Amy Tan

    459 Words  | 2 Pages

    In "Mother Tongue", a short personal essay written by Amy Tan, the writer reveals the longstanding humiliation she underwent at the hands of her mother's limited English. The essay describes Tan's formative years as the daughter of two immigrant parents and she writes that she "grew up with two Englishes - American English and Chinese-English" (Tan 11). She reviews the conflicts her mother experienced as a woman with restrictive language skills, yet she explains the eloquence of her mother's tongue

    Read More

  • Amy Tan Mother Tongue Summary

    518 Words  | 3 Pages

    Amy Tan had shown to feel emotions throughout the many anecdotes she shares within the lines of her short story, ‘Mother Tongue’. Countless of those emotions were directed towards her Mother’s broken English” which lead her to feel three major emotions. First there had been the embarrassment at an early age, the anger she had towards certain people when in her pre-adult stage, and finally the concluding thought of adoration towards her mother once she finally cared to understand. In the beginning

    Read More

More about Amy Tan Mother Tongue Summary

Open Document