Language Discrimination In Mother Tongue By Amy Tan

Superior Essays
Mother Tongue Every language is unique in itself. Everyone have a different way to express them self. Yet why do we do not accept the people who are different? “Mother tongue” is are on the article written by Amy Tan. In the story, she discusses about her mother ‘fractured” English. How her mother faced difficulties because she had an accent when she talked. She said that “some says they understand none of it is as if she were speaking pure Chinses.” instead of praising her that she is bilingual. She has a privilege of knowing multiple languages. People made fun of her. There are many challenge bilingual immigrants come across while they try to adjust in new environments, …show more content…
As we live in United State, united states have always been known for welcoming immigrant. When immigrant come to the U.S they have a dream to get better education and being successful, but as they go to school many people has hard time learning English language, because they were exposed to their native language since childhood. They get bullied by student in school because they are different and has no English which simultaneously push immigrants to end their life. According to Sophie “immigrant youth may be easy target for bullying since they may look, dress, and talk differently than native born adolescents and they have relatively low social standing”. One of my friend sharing her story that she faced of being language barrier as immigrant. Everyone says that Asian are smart at math. It was her freshman year and she was in my math class. Teacher presented us with an equation problem to solve. She knew the answer of the problem so she raised her hand and shout out the answer, but none of the classmates neither teacher understand what she was saying. Fortunately, one of her friend who speak same her language understand her accent in that class so, she translated to teacher what she meant to say. After that incidence, she was very embarrassed to participate in class activity due to the fear that she does not want to make joke out of herself in front of …show more content…
Morris. "Accents in the Workplace: Their Effects during a Job Interview." International Journal of Psychology, vol. 45, no. 6, Dec. 2010, pp. 417-426. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00207594.2010.499950.

Walsh, Sophie, et al. "The Relationship between Immigrant School Composition, Classmate Support and Involvement in Physical Fighting and Bullying among Adolescent Immigrants and Nonimmigrants in 11 Countries." Journal of Youth & Adolescence, vol. 45, no. 1, Jan. 2016, pp. 1-16. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s10964-015-0367-0.

Scott, David, et al. "Leisure Constraints and Acculturation among Korean Immigrants." Journal of Park & Recreation Administration, vol. 24, no. 2, Summer 2006, pp. 63-86. EBSCOhost, cotc.idm.oclc.org/login? url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=21792417&site=ehost-live.

Home Is Where the Heart Dwells, blogs.harvard.edu/guorui/2008/02/06/mother-tongue-by-amy-tan/. Accessed 22 Nov.

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Language barrier. The difficulty of having an immigrant parent is the language barrier. My mother had to struggle when transitioning from Spanish to English. Being raised in a Spanish speaking home and attending an English speaking school was tough. I soon gave up on Spanish because I needed to translate for my mother in everyday life.…

    • 360 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Se Habla Espan᷉ol and Mother Tongue Tanya Maria Barrientos and Amy Tan are similar but also contain some key differences. Barrientos and Tan are children of immigrants that are ashamed of their families heritage. Although Barrientos and Tan were raised within different cultures, they are both ashamed of where they came from. As Barrientos says, “I wanted to call myself Latino, to finally take pride, but it felt like a lie” (631).…

    • 724 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jaslyn Mendez Reilly Honors ELA 10 October 11, 2017 I Am Me Yo soy Jaslyn, and I am Latina. I’m a Mexican girl who was born in the United States of America, which makes me Mexican American. Being Chicana always made me feel like an outcast. When I tried to make friends with full Americans, I could never relate to them because I wasn't exactly like them.…

    • 925 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Both Tan and Anzaldua go into depth about about their ethnic backgrounds while incorporating their language. Anzaldua and Tan, facing language difficulties, learned that in order to overcome these challenges, they needed to incorporate their families. The changes they would make not only affected themselves, but also their families. When living with a family who speaks “fractured English”, they faced hardships and challenges on a daily basis. Anzaldua’s…

    • 840 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    She ends up disciplining her the way a proper Chinese girl is raised, after she misbehaves which according to her it is through spanking. This brings conflict between the narrator and her daughter, Natalie. The two women argue and the narrator ends up having to move out. Eventually end up spending very little time with each other. Culture defines who we are.…

    • 1073 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the story “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan tries to distinguish the difference between two different cultures as a child. She is raised by her mother who speaks “broken” English, and the outside world where perfect English is spoken. Amy had a hard time as a child because of the different Englishes that were spoken. Tan as an adult continues to find the difference between the languages that are spoken, even though she knows that the one spoken by her mother will never improve. Tan’s attitude towards mother tongue starts as being embarrassed and ashamed, because Mother Tongue was the only type of English that her mother could speak.…

    • 927 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rhetorical analysis for “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” Have you ever been in a situation that people around you were speaking a language which you do not understand at all, and they diminished your home language when you tried to speak out? If not, at least someone did experienced the awkwardness and feel outrages of being put in such a situation. The article “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is written by Gloria Anzaldua who was the sixth generation Tejana. She wrote this article to describe how living in United States as a Mexican was difficult and upset. She expressed her outrages toward people improper behavior to her home language.…

    • 1082 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The audience of this essay is those who do not come from immigrant backgrounds, possibly who knows an immigrant or not at all. A non-immigrant audience would be able to take a closer look at the language struggles those of immigrant backgrounds face on a daily basis. The audience would be able to have a better understanding of linguistic terrorism, something that many immigrants face. Though linguistic terrorism is not as prominent in modern times as it has been in the past, it is something that is still an issue today. Readers would have an easier time understanding and being patient with those who we consider to be speaking broken English.…

    • 454 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    That one GIRL: ME Who am I? It’s the same question everyone has about themselves, but do you ever have an answer for that? Do you know who you actually are?…

    • 915 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Despite the odds against her, Tan became a successful writer and proved everyone else wrong. Tan knew her mother was not as confident in herself as she was, and she knew that others faced the same obstacles her mother did, so she wrote this selection to help apprise the audience of the difficulties immigrants face everyday because they can not speak “normal”…

    • 1226 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Amy Tan Mother Tongue

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Amy Tan, the author of “mother tongue” expresses what she learned growing up in a home where broken was spoken. She learned about how she spoke different to different people in her life, how people reacted to her mom’s broken English, and how this has affected her life growing up. Growing up, Amy was ashamed of her mother’s “limited English”. Her mother though knew that her English wasn’t very good. Some of Amy’s friends would not completely understand what her mom was saying.…

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The writers’ method of writing is clear and well thought out, but there is also the matter of what is actually being communicated, as appose to how she gets her thoughts across. While Tan explains the difficulties that her mother has with communicating clearly, she makes it clear that she has an unwavering respect for her mother, regardless of her misgivings and barriers. Although there aren’t many references to this fact directly in the text, it’s a kind of undertone that sets in with the reader, possibly without even being noticed. The writer does an exceptional job conveying this idea subtly, and without depositing it into the text. This is an example of how Tan has honed into her writing skills, while also using her natural abilities and personal identity to communicate…

    • 921 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    America has always been the country where immigrants come for a better life. Our country’s society has constantly been changing as more and more people come here from different walks of life. There has been a rise in the attention given to immigrants and the cultural changes in America lately. Multiculturalization and racial diversity can be both beneficial and harmful to our society today. Language is one of the biggest effects of the United States becoming a multicultural country.…

    • 808 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Problems Immigrants Face

    • 707 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Immigrants face many problems when they are in a place so different to what used to be their home, where they grew up. Many of them do not have English and that is a challenge that most face. English being your second language could cause many troubles from finding a job to purchasing your weekly shop. Many have to take low paid jobs due to the language barrier. A way in which this problem could be overcome is by immigrants taking ESL (English as a Second Language) classes.…

    • 707 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    At first she was ashamed of the English her mother spoke. I kind of agree with it but I kind of don't agree with it also. The reason I agree with it is that sometimes it can be embarrassing for a child do have to deal with that all the time.…

    • 592 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays