Amy Tan Language Barriers

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Immigrants live complicated lives as they adapt to new communities and new language while coming to America. Language barrier has a major effect on the lives of our immigrants and those who are acquiring English as their second language. Language barrier is a barrier to communication resulting from speaking different languages. The immigration population in the United States is growing rapidly. For many immigrants English is not their first language. In America, English is the main spoken language. People who are acquiring English as their second language are expected to embrace English along with customs and culture while at the same time holding on to the language and culture they first began with. However, language discrimination is a major …show more content…

Tan was the child of an immigrant and an educated English major. Tan transformed from being a child with a child’s mind to finding the beauty and importance in her mother’s broken English. One of her main focus was to show how language isolate those who don’t speak the same way as others. In the passage, she emphasizes the main idea that we all speak different languages and we are categorized by the way we speak. Tan’s mother was treated differently because of her lack of English. When Amy was young, she was the voice for her mother, the child with the perfect English. One moment Tan shares with us in “Mother Tongue” that involves language discrimination was a time when her mother Ms. Tan had a hard time at a hospital for results about a health issue a due to her limited English. She spoke her best English and made a little bit of mistakes but it just wasn’t enough for the hospital to give her what she needed. Tan stated in the passage “So she said she would not leave until the doctor called her daughter. “And when the doctor finally called her daughter “Me”, who spoke in perfect English we had assurances that the CAT scan would be found, promises that a conference call would be held and apologies for any suffering my mother had gone through for a most regrettable mistake”. This situation with Tan’s mother is problem within language discrimination. How an individual (Ms. Tan) who has limited English gets treated differently vs. the treatment of one (Amy Tan) who speaks perfect

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