Tongue

In the short story, “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan contemplates her past childhood experiences on how they affected her life and future education by holding her between two worlds, and at times, made her feel…

In the short story Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, the author, Tan, has a positive attitude towards her mother’s identity and language. We meet an author who, while being ashamed of her mother’s abilities in speaking the English language, is very proud to be her daughter. Tan’s mother’s limited English is humiliating for her during certain parts in the story. She learns to appreciate it more however, as she grows up. Her mother’s different use of the English language, is what shaped her into who she…

form of languages every day, integrating themselves so deeply that it becomes the life altering metamorphoses that not only affects a generation but also a culture and family. As esteemed novelist and writer Amy Tan describes in her essay, Mother Tongue, it is “the language spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular, plays a large role in shaping the language of the child” (181). Many people can relate to a verity such as family, always being the central…

Grounded by Language In Mother Tongue, Amy Tan begins her short story by giving the audience prior knowledge that Tan is not a scholar of English and she is not able to give much more than her past knowledge on the English language. She then proceeds to give the readers an idea of how much she is fascinated by language itself and gives it a grading scale from complex english to simple English. Tan presents her short story by giving the readers a recent experience that made her rethink the…

barriers and the impact it had on their lives. Living in America does not mean that an individual is American and regardless of the fact that Amy Tan was born in California she knew that she is not your “typical” American. In her essay “Mother Tongue,” Tan foretells the complete battle between mainstream English and Mandarin in her world. She grew up speaking awkwardly structured English with her mother and quality English in the public, Brown2 leading to separation of two…

Childhood he adapted English as his second language, eventually making it his primary language. Rodriguez used his second language on an everyday basis forcing him to forget his first language. Whereas, in Gloria’s Anzaldua book “How to Tame Wild Tongue” she knew the importance of her native language. Therefore, she kept her cultural upbringing. These are example of two different people adapting…

When speaking to others, we often forget is how we sound, and how we pronounce words differently from our peers. Amy Tan is a Chinese american author who wrote an article called Mother 's Tongue about her mother 's english affecting both of them in their lives. Tan noticed a lot of little details that were there with her mother 's English and her own. I noticed these details as well inside the article and came to the realization that people are discriminated against for having imperfect…

beautiful systematic sequence of carefully crafted words in a rhythmic pattern. But with the beauty of the language comes the complexity and it is difficult for immigrants from other countries to adapt to the language. In Amy Tan 's essay “Mothers Tongue”, she explains how earlier in her life she expressed disdain for her mother 's “limited English” (Tan 282). Amy felt ashamed, limited in her perception of her mother 's image, and feels her mother 's English dwindled the quality of her thoughts.…

Legitimacy is defined as the lawfulness or authenticity of something. Nowadays in society, Legitimacy is not matter at all whether an individual is is legitimate or not. People are identified as legitimate by their language, race, ethnicity, religion, culture, behavior. Two ways people are identified, one is by self and by others. We use various markers of status to create a legitimate identity for ourselves such as journal, article, social media, protesting. Society makes a legal document…

Society discriminates those who are deemed “different”, thus, society discriminates immigrants. In her essay “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan shares her and her mother’s personal experiences with discrimination after moving to the United States from China. She believes that immigrants who cannot speak perfect English are unfairly judged. Non-immigrants need to understand the hardships that are faced by people who move to different countries. Speaking about discrimination, Tan utilizes parallelism,…