Amy Tan's Mother Tongue

In the story mother tongue, the author explains the different types of English’s that are used in the story and the author names them limited, simple, and broken English. Therefore to explain the meaning of the various English’s, I would say that “simple” is just the meaning of proper English with good grammar or the English she usually uses when she is working as a writer. For an example when the author states her use of simple or perfect English in the text of the story. “And then I said in perfect English, "Yes, I'm getting rather concerned. You had agreed to send the check two weeks ago, but it hasn't arrived."(Tan 34) “Limited” English is basically when one's English is misunderstood for “imperfect” English or is when the speaker is not taken seriously because their English isn’t very clear to that person.” my mother's "limited" English limited my perception of her…I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say That is, …she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were …show more content…
Du had asked to be invited to become a member of my family but my father wasn’t really serious about it, so he didn’t take it seriously, until he became a big time mafia member. As he became important it became very hard to invite him here because he was so busy and so one day he came to only pay his respects for the wedding celebration. Showing up to pay respects is a way of the Chinese, so I heard he came and left so I didn’t get to see him. As a result, I went to his side of town just to see him and they were having a big dinner. I was just 19 at the time. (Translation) Honestly, my first experience with code switching was kind of difficult because my mom was stubborn and whenever she spoke she always thought that she was saying the right thing. So, I had a hard time making her understand that she was being misunderstood because she was speaking “broken