Mother Tongue for Amy Tan - Free Essay Example

Mother tongue is about the struggles that the author has with her mothers broken English. At the beginning of mother tongue she explains her love for language. She also explains the different types of English she would speak with everyone else and with her mother. Tan then explains all the difficulties she and her mother faced because of the way her mother spoke. At the beginning of mother tongue amy tan explains her love for language. She tells us that she is fascinated by the language in daily life and how language has great power. I believe that the power that she is talking about is how language can express emotions or even show an image. Tan has a lot of thoughts and emotions the way she learned English in school but can also speak the same broken English as her mother. She later states that that was the language that helped me shape the way I saw things expressed things made sense of the world paragraph 6 that explains the way she got into English and the way she saw the world. Tan goes into explaining how she recently was made aware of the different types of English that she would speak with everyone else and her mother. She was giving a speech to a large group of people with her mother in the room. She realized that it was the first ti me her mother ever heard her use the kind of English that she was using. She realized that the way her school taught the language and the way her mother spoke were totally different. She knows that she can speak perfect English around other people but she can not around her mom. Tan later describes a walk that her her mother and her husband were on. She realized a change in her language and no one else caught on to it. She explains how some of her friends can understand fifty per cent of what her mother is saying while others can understand eighty to ninety per cent. Some can not even understand her at all. Tan can understand her mother very clearly. tan tells how when she was younger how she was ashamed of her mothers English. She then describes how she had to make phone calls for her mother because her mother realized the limitations of her English. Tan describes the calls she had to make for her mother when she was younger and the difficulties her and her mother faced because of the way her mother spoke. She tells us a time when she was fifteen and had to talk with the stockbroker. Her mother said why he doesnt send me to check already two weeks late. So mad he lies to me losing me money. Paragraph 11 tan answers in standard English. Tan understands that her mother is not easily understood by others because of the English that she speaks. I can see that her mother always gets in trouble with her broken English. Tan understands but her mother does not. Her mother just shouts at people expecting them to understand. This event shows me that the stockbroker does not respect tans mother so he just ignores her. This shows that the way we speak determines how a person looks upon us. Tan later describes how her mother went to the hospital because of a brain tumour and the doctors lost her cat scans and did not apologize when telling her the news. Even though tans mother used her best English paragraph 14 the hospital still had no sympathy towards her mother. when tan later came to the hospital and used correct English they apologized and promised of the cat scans being found. Tan decided to learn more about perfect English. I can see that Tan has set a goal for herself to let people know about the power of language. Tan doesnt try to show us that she is a good writer. She wants to explain the power that language has. Tan shares her personal opinions and experiences to make others believe that language has power. She begins by explaining her love for languages. She then goes on to explain the different languages that she would use with her mother and everyone else. Finally she explains the dif ficulties she and her mother went through because of the way her mother spoke. I believe the main purpose for tan to write this was to tell readers to not waste the importance of the power of language.