Amy Tan Mother Tongue Analysis

In the examining and writing my analysis of the article Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, I hope to appeal to an audience that wishes to expand their knowledge of the cultural use of various languages and their social impacts. In this case, the language would be English and the culture would be that of Asian-Americans. I would think that this work, and the analysis of, would primarily be of interest to those in academic or research fields of sociology and language. I would hope the reader of my analysis would be interested in gaining insight into how using a “broken” English system heavily influences one’s communication and feeling towards those outside of your culture. The analysis would benefit the reader by

Amy Tan could speak proper English, but she would try to speak simple English when she was either speaking to her mother or husband. At moments Tan would be comfortable with speaking simple English to her mom and husband, but when they were in the public's presence, then she would become embarrassed. Speaking simple English was a form of intimacy for Tan and her husband.

Time and time again, Tan’s mother’s inability to speak proper English is seen by standard English speakers as a sign that she is unintelligent; they believe that the way she speaks is wrong and therefore the things she has to say are not important. This belief is so pervasive that as a teen, Tan herself used to believe that her mother was not smart because of how she spoke. Because Tan’s mother’s speech did not follow the rules of traditional English, Tan “believed that her [mother’s] English reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly, her thoughts were imperfect” (146). Because Tan’s mother speaks in ways that are described as “broken” and “limited”, as a teen Tan felt her mother’s language indicated that her mom was simple minded. However, as Tan grew up, she came to appreciate the beauty and intellect behind her mother’s words. While Tan’s friends comment that they cannot understand a majority of what Tan’s mother says, Tan hears her mother’s speech as “perfectly clear, perfectly natural”, and remarks that “her language, as [she] hear[s] it, is vivid, direct, full of observations and imagery” (146). Tan’s friends seem to hear Tan’s mother’s speech on a surface level; since they cannot understand what she is trying to say, they cannot understand how rich her language is. Just because Tan’s friends do not understand her mother, it does not make the intricacies of how she speaks any less unique. The tendency of standard English

According to Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics, and Bryan Stevenson, American lawyer and social justice activist, today’s world is experiencing a huge issue of society's growing inequality and one of the brightest examples of the inequality is the America's justice system. The thing is that society is not aware of that kind of growing issue and how it stacks up to the real stats.

The purpose of Amy Tan’s essay, “Mother Tongue,” is to show how challenging it can be if an individual is raised by a parent who speaks “limited English” (36) as Tan’s mother does, partially because it can result in people being judged poorly by others. As Tan’s primary care giver, her mother was a significant part of her childhood, and she has a strong influence over Tan’s writing style. Being raised by her mother taught her that one’s perception of the world is heavily based upon the language spoken at home. Alternately, people’s perceptions of one another are based largely on the language used.

“War is the only proper school for a surgeon” - Hippocrates. That would be the case in the early 20th century. The early 20th century is commonly associated with war, blood shed and conflict. During this time is when lots of people died. People died due to many things; war or battle, lack of medical care, or even due to an epidemic. Medical care was rough back then, the shortage of doctors and the lack of medical facilities made the death toll higher. Today, we see less people die due to epidemics, lack of medical care and even less due to battle. Thats all possible because medical care during the 20th century is very different from today, given that today we have better facilities, more doctors, and more advanced technology.

Language as a combination of single words and different ideas affects us everyday in life. In the essay “Mother tongue” by Amy Tan, the author describes how her mother’s English influences her in her career and life that the “mother tongue” does not limit her as a writer, but shaped her and her perception on life instead. And her attitude to her mother’s English changes from the initial embarrassment to the final appreciation.

Despite growing up amidst a language deemed as “broken” and “fractured”, Amy Tan’s love for language allowed her to embrace the variations of English that surrounded her. In her short essay “Mother Tongue”, Tan discusses the internal conflict she had with the English learned from her mother to that of the English in her education. Sharing her experiences as an adolescent posing to be her mother for respect, Tan develops a frustration at the difficulty of not being taken seriously due to one’s inability to speak the way society expects. Disallowing others to prove their misconceptions of her, Tan exerted herself in excelling at English throughout school. She felt a need to rebel against the proverbial view that writing is not a strong

“Mother Tongue” was a speech Amy Tan made in front of many authoritative scholars who had investigated English literature for long time. Tan perhaps had great pressure for the experience she talked about is not familiar at all to those experts. They wouldn’t understand easily how someone from an immigrant family felt. Later the speech became a well-known essay of Tan and the audience changed. She was talking to everybody, especially the ones who speak perfect English. She wanted them to know that one with limited English could still be intelligent. Things behind language might be more valuable than language itself sometimes. That was something exceeded fluency, vocabularies and grammar. Amy Tan’s purpose of writing Mother Tongue is to remind the native English speakers to respect the “broken English” speakers and to find out the worthy thoughts concealed by the imperfect languages.

In the essay, “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan lays out examples of noticing the different Englishes in her life and how she incorporates them into her writing. She also breaks down the different versions of English that have taken root in her life. Tan notes that she includes all the Englishes of her life in her book, The Joy Luck Club. Tan, the daughter of immigrants, learned to navigate between the “perfect” English of her professional life and the “broken” English of her youth. The author’s main claim of there being no perfect way of speaking English is one that can be easily recognized because Tan gives clear examples of the diverse versions of English in her life, she pinpoints moments in which she sees the differences and discovers how to accept and acclimate these differences to her life and career.

English can be used amongst friends or with close family because in some cases they will not expect it from you all the time throughout the weeks but, employees should never use Non-Standard English in a workplace or a formal situation. Using Standard English will earn a person a great deal of respect in a business place. Many will see an individual as a very professional worker and will lead to them getting promoted or offered higher opportunities.

Since there do exist different English varieties it is clear that the most important are the American English and the British English, which are quietly different yet so connected with each other. Generally, it is agreed that no one version is "correct" however, there are certainly preferences in use. However, there are a lot of grammatical differences between these two, which sometimes cannot be identified by English speaking peoples unless they are very meticulous or linguistics to understand them, but also the native speaker of both these varieties can easily detect these grammar differences. They are present in pronunciation differences in both consonants and vowels, in intonation and word stressing; also differences are in vocabulary, in verbs, nouns, phrasal verbs and also using names of items or tools. The main difference can be seen in spelling where a general difference is in the usage of prefix and suffix. Also differences are seen in the use of auxiliary verbs, past tense verbs, tag questions etc… So the British and American English have more similarities than

Nonstandard dialect in most countries like America is known to be used by low or non-prestige groups that have many grammatical errors and that are considered to be uneducated. This conclusion was acquired because of the negative attention that this kind of dialect draws. Educated people tend to judge the speaker of such a dialect as socially inferior, and non-educated. People in general usually use the terms "bad", “improper” or "incorrect" to describe Non-standard English. Today I’m going to show you how a Kuwaiti non-standard dialect reverses these assumptions! People all around the world no matter who always want to seem sophisticated around others, in this essay I will be talking about how Kuwaitis show this eagerness or

In contemporary society the Standard variety of English is the most commonly used as it is respected and associated with a higher prestige. Its usage is also advocated by prescriptivists who believe that it is the ‘correct’ and only variety that should be used. Standard English is usually seen in formal settings, where its usage is necessary for official and public purposes. However, contextual factors play a vital role in determining the most appropriate variety to be used, which is supported by the Principle of Appropriateness. Certain contexts where a non-standard variety is necessary are in social media settings and in communities of different ethnicities, where they are undeniably required to create solidarity between speakers.

One of the problems English language learners face is dealing with the differences between British and American English. Although the two forms of English may seem similar on the surface, there are contrasts in vocabulary, grammar, spelling, punctuation, telling dates, and other differences.