Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue

Amy Tanr's Mother Tongue focuses on the prejudices of Amy and her mother. All her life, Amyr's mother has been looked down upon because she did not speak proper English, Amyr's purpose behind writing this short essay was to inform and express her beliefs and new discovery of the language of intimacy and talk about how language influenced her life while growing up. Amy Tan also talks about the challenges that an individual has to go through if he/she gets raised by a parent who speaks limited English. Identity and culture gets substantial. As being the first generation Chinese-Americans both Amy and her mother faced many obstacles, Communicating was one of the biggest issue that they had to go through, language is much more than just a way to communicate. People make assumptions about others just by how they look or how they speak also misconceived views of people from different country or people who speaks different language. Amy Tan discusses a time, where she had to deal with learning three types of Englishes from her mother which includes simple, broken English. She mentions how growing up listening to her motherr's English, she has learned to adapt and able to fully understand her, even though constantly she had to correct her. Sharing her experience as an adult, she develops a frustration at the difficulty of not being taken seriously due to oner's inability to speak the way society expects. Amy Tan talks about "her" experience to portray how people did not respect her mother as she deserves and thought of her as uneducated just because she couldnt speak the way people expect She used to have me call people on phone to pretend i was she. Amyr's mother could not speak professional English so to translate her motherr's broken English, Amy used to pretend that she was her mother. She also talks about how Asian American students are directed more towards science and math and not English due to their broken and limited English spoken at home. Amy Tan writes this to show people that there is no right was of speaking English, and English comes in many forms not just one by repeating the word Englishes in place of English and want people to know that everyone has their own way of speaking when theyre around certain people or different surroundings; even if it is the same language.

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