Reading Amy Tan's Mother Tongue

Reading Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue", I came across the idea of language being "fractured and broken". In the essay, she provided examples of how her mother's limited English caused her to be given poor service at department stores, banks, and restaurants; stating how people would usually consider a lack of depth in their thinking due to their "broken" or "limited" use of language. Conversely, she thinks that her mother's English is "vivid, full of observation and imagery". Indeed, Chinglish is what creates meaning for the speaker and highlights the emotional viewpoints of the native tongue, despite it being the literal translation of a Chinese saying (which makes it grammatically incorrect with funny pronunciations and deemed as a form of "broken …show more content…
Even though from an English speaker's perspective, these words seem like a bad translation from Chinese to English. But comparing them phonetically to the "proper" English the Chinese version, it actually contains more graphic description than the abstract English words. Growing up, these three words would strike fear in me whenever my grandmother shouted, “no eye see lah”, as it conveyed her total and utter frustration at my childish behavior. Every time my grandmother shouts "no eye see" the image of her covering her eyes in order to avoid the undesirable information sears into my …show more content…
I remember another time when grandma was trying to teach me a lesson about respecting elders. She kept complaining how she didn’t like talking to my uncle because she felt like she was "playing piano to a cow", and described my uncle as a person who always is "dragging mud in water"…... Throughout the conversation, grandma did not use any direct description to talk about my uncle, but I was able to fully comprehend the frustration she felt towards my uncle. "Playing piano to cow" is an English translation of the Chinese saying 对牛弹琴, just like its literal meaning, this Chinese idiom means it's a one-way conversation (since a cow would never understand music let alone giving a response). This is no different to my request for a salary raise which ends up falling on deaf ears. "Dragging mud in water" (拖泥带水) conveys the idea the intended recipient is lazy and resistant to change. The image of walking in a muddy field in a downpour best depicts the idea of a person dragging on their work and not getting anything done. I personally find my grandmother's wordings very lively since it not only created a clear image in my mind of how difficult it was for my grandmother to have a conversation with my uncle but also did so through a subtle way that won't hurt anyone's