Mother tongue

Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” addresses social issues of the English language present today. In her essay, Amy tells the audience language “evokes an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea or a simple truth”. By saying this, she explains that language has a huge impact on her life in general, how when surrounded by different people she speaks different “Englishes”.  since her mother is of Chinese origin, her English was not the best, Amy states that she has described her mother’s English as “broken” or “fractured”. Like all non-native speakers, Amy’s mother had trouble with the language, however the problems her mother faced has helped Amy understand language from a much deeper and more personal perspective. To many, a language is simply spoken and written, nonetheless in Amy’s situation language creates emotion. Growing up, Amy was always wary of her mother’s English, at times she perceived her mother’s limited vocabulary as it “reflected the quality of what she had to say”. Growing up, in the same household as her mother has enabled Amy to understand her way of speaking, for you and I it might be unclear or incomprehensible but to her it is as clear as it can be. This essay really opened my eyes to the reality of the world around us, and how language can be comprehensible by one and incomprehensible by another. Tan, further goes on to touch on a very important point she tells “Math is precise; there is only one correct answer. Whereas, for me at least, the answers on English tests were always a judgement call, a matter of opinion and personal experience”. This appeals to me, as my perspective of a text or an advertisement might be different to yours. We, as individuals understand things from various point of views and that makes us all unique.