English Only Movement

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A word that have been a problem for many immigrant families for years is none other than LANGUAGE. Why is this a problem? For many immigrant families in the United Stated language play a big role in their life’s. For these people language is their identity and tell us where they are from. Another reason why immigrant suffer with this problem is because the way they communicate isn’t accepted by others. During the year 1803 there was a movement called the “English Only Movement”. This movement was known as official English movement refer to a political movement for the use of only the language “ENGLISH” in the United States of America. In the essay “IF Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” by James Baldwin, “Mother Tongue”…show more content…
Because, it is her translation into English of what she calls her mother’s internal language that is at the heart of this story. The narrator illustrate a world in which readers experience the power of a rich, colorful language. For example, when Mother Woo characterizes Auntie Lindo’s daughter, an accomplished chess player at a young age, as “best tricky,” the reader knows not only what it means, but also how it sounds. This brand of English, often called fractured or broken, becomes a vernacular that captures the tone and color of the experience of growing up in a bilingual environment. (enotes.com) Many immigrant families see America as the land of opportunity where anyone could become anything he/she may wanted to be. Tan’s “Two Kinds.” centers her idea on the daughter of a Chinese immigrant mother who by any means or measure (in other words desperately) wants her daughter to become successful. In the short story, the author goes on to show the difficult lives immigrants face when moving to a new culture. Furthermore, illustrating the conflict between Chinese mother and American-born daughter, the spoken language of the two creates a verbal duel. In other words, June demands that her mother see her for who she really is “I’m not a genius!” her mother responds with, “Who ask you be genius?” The mother’s question, although incomplete grammatically, projects her confusion over…show more content…
Baldwin talks about language, how it affect who we are as person, within our community and as a nation. He went on talking about language within our country. Where we have different groups of people specking the same language with different “dialect” or “accent”. He stated in page 131 “a French man living in Paris speaks a subtly and crucially different language from that of the man living in Marseilles; neither sound very much like a man living in Quebec: and they would all have great difficulty in apprehending what the men from Guadeloupe or Martinique, is saying, to say nothing of the man from Senegal—although the “common” language of all these are is French” All have a great difficulty in capturing or understanding what either is saying, even though they all speak the same language French. Some counties are determined not to allow their “language” or “roots” to be destroyed or to be

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