Mother Tongue Written by Amy Tan

Joel Varghese

Dr. Jaehan Park
ENGL 015
September 25, 2015

Mother Tongue

       Mother Tongue written by Amy Tan is very interesting; it relates culture and language and the different dialects and forms that drive from each language. Tan claims that we speak many different languages to communicate with people and our intelligence is judged by the way we speak that language. Tan writes this essay as she is amazed by languages. She talks about being born into a chines culture and the different types of Englishes she speaks to her mother and the people outside.

       Amy uses an example of her mother describing the Chines gangster; this helps the reader understand what she is trying to show in this essay. She also tells us that the English she spoke to her mom was different than what she spoke with others. A perfect example is before mentioning about her mother she summarizes the whole story so that the readers would understand what she means to say. When I read this I understood her point. But I was totally lost when I read Tan’s retelling of the story. Amy’s summary helped me understand what hew mother was trying to say. However the whole point of this essay was not to show the past of her mother or any other topic, but to show that she spoke different Englishes to her mother and different one to others.

Another example that she uses is when she mentions that no one took her mother seriously because of her broken English. She talks about when her mothers CAT scans were lost and they did not treat her right and did not even apologize for loosing it but when she called them and talked to them they were extremely sorry for what happened and apologized to her for what had happened. In this example the readers could get a better idea of what she was trying to say in her writing.

         I can also relate to Amy Tans essay, as I am also an immigrant. Even though I spoke fluent English since I was a kid. I think that a person cannot be judged by his or her pronunciation or his ability to speak a proper language. For example, my father does not speak the best English, which doesn’t make him unintelligent. At times when I see him doing amazing things at his work place I stand astonished about how smart he is. I strongly believe that a person shouldn’t be judged like that. It all connects back to Amy Tans essay about how her mom talked to big stockbroker’s with the broken English she knew. She was still an intelligent person.