Evaluating Mother Tongue

Evaluating “Mother of Tongue”

Limited or broken English can affect a person’s ability to communicate or make it difficult for others people to understand him or her. In her article “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan argues that the broken English, common in her households as well as other immigrant families did limit her powers in English. Tan purpose is to illustrate how speaking broken English does affect how people see you and limits people. Tan uses a humorous tone in order to attract readers with broken English, a majority of whom are immigrants of Asian origins. In the article, Tan uses dialogue and personal stories to support the concerning the use of broken or limited English. Tan article it is relevancy, sufficiently and credible.

When Tan says that she loves language but she is not a scholar, she does this to make the reader understand her background. By doing this, she preempts the chance that the reader will take her opinion out of context. This is because Tan wants the reader to understand how language can be portrayed in different ways even when the type of language used is limited. The author comes from the strata of Chinese emigrants. She was grown in conditions of ethnic diversity and multilingual environment. Therefore, the issue of mother tongue allows her to understand the

nature of her roots. Indeed, she is concerned with this issue when writes, “…my mother’s English is perfectly clear…” (Tan 2002:1) However, it is also clear that Tan understands the limitations of broken English: therefore, she takes time to let the reader know the challenges one encounters if she or he is not proficient in the language.
“The intersection of memory upon imagination”; “There is an aspect of my fiction that relates to thus-and-thus”.

(Tan 2002:3) As long as these examples of speech appear to be grammatically and stylistically correct, they seem to be irrelevant to the topic the article covers – a broken language. Hence, the first impression is deceptive and in this case these peculiar examples are used to illustrate how does the refined language of the author who is basically one of the characters in the story contrast with the language of her mother the reader will be exposed to further. The author is evaluating by evidence type of dialog, providing personal feedback, and justifying the word

usage.
Not waste money that way” (Tan 2002:4). These words belong to the author as well. It is hard to believe that this phrase and the phrases mentioned above may be outspoken by the same person, but this example really explains the shift in the speech of the author she experiences everyday when she communicates with her family and other people. Therefore, Tan provides the audience with a quite sufficient picture of the situation by giving the examples by her both pure and broken English. The author is evaluating by evidence the type of situation that justified the choice of statement, however the personal comment to the communication context are insufficient.
Tan throughout the article, she uses dialogue examples to illustrate how her mother broken English did limit her in various ways. The piece of the article where Tan's mother tells the story about the man with the same surname she had (“Du Yusong having business like fruit stand. Like off the street kind. [...] He come to my wedding. I didn’t see, I heard it. I gone to boy’s side, they have YMCA dinner. Chinese age I was nineteen.”) (Tan 2002:5) in that paragraph, it demonstrates Tan English versus her mother’s broken English. Can also be regarded as a piece of evidence and it, according to the author's words, is a quotation from her mother's speech which Tan had videotaped and transcribed, so there is no reason to doubt the credibility of this evidence because it can be checked out.
“I was giving a talk to a large group of people, the same talk I had already given to half a dozen other groups. The nature of the talk was about my writing, my life, and my book, The Joy Luck Club. The talk was going along well enough, until I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her.” (Tan 2002:3). This individual story can be regarded as a relevant one because it shows how did the author of the article realized that she actually uses two different kinds of English – a normal one or broken- depending on the situation. The author is evaluating by evidence type of personal story, providing personal example, and explaining the reasons.
Tan gives many evidence of personal stories to illustrate how she could speak both languages. Also how she had to help her mother because Tan mother had difficulty with her broken English. The story how Tan did replaced her mother in a telephone conversation with a stockbroker. This is an example of sufficient piece of evidence as long as it offers the audience the possibility to observe how fast does the change in her language she is talking about happen and how sharp is the difference between these two languages that there has to be a kind of a translator to explain her mother's speech to others. Before that, when Tan says, “When I was fifteen, she use to have me call people on the phone to pretend I was she.” (Tan 2002:9). It tells us that was not the only time she did that. Tan has done that since she was fifteen years old.
At the end of the article, Tan gives a lot of personal information: “I became an English major my first year in college, after being enrolled as pre-med. I started writing nonfiction as a freelancer the week after I was told by my former boss that writing was my worst skill and I should hone my talents toward account management.” (Tan 2002:18). As long as these facts are actual individual stories, their credibility is pointless to be doubted.
People who used limited or broken English face many challenges when expressing themselves. However, it is possible for people whit a complete mastery of language to speak a broken language especially if they use to at some point in their lives. unfortunaly, her mother is not able to because she is not conversant with this kind of speech. Nonetheless, she can understand what is being said although to a limited degree. The reason of this cultural an language barrier that comes up along on the road to successful English learning. In this relationship, it would be better to be taken away upon the boundaries of good writing and comprehending, specifically when it is true that people are conservative ones.