Mother Tongue

Today in class, we had to read over and analyze the essay, Mother Tongue by Amy Tan. The text is about how society interacts best when the content of the speaker is presented in a formal manner. In this essay, Amy Tan describes her mother's english as being broken, fractured and ultimately, limited. She provides real life experiences, faced by her mother who communicates with what society would call "broken" english. In one of these experiences, Amy Tan (who speaks formal english) would have to speak for her mother in order to be taken seriously, as she found out that most people tend to show more respect if you present yourself in a relatable manner. This leads us to the most profound issue faced by her mother in the text; the lack of respect. Amy Tan mentions how the way someone spoke would affect how people reacted to them. In the case of Amy's mother, most people failed to take her seriously, presumably because of her ethnicity and her so called "broken" english. I feel that most people tend to treat something they are familiar with, in a respectable manner. Since Amy's mother had a different way of speaking to the majority of the people around her, she was not taken seriously. I personally believe that people need to accept and encourage different variations of language.