Kingston's Tongue-Tied

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“Tongue-Tied” by Maxine Hong Kingston narrates what her younger self experienced after having her frenulum cut by her mother and how she struggled to speak. As she grew up she felt proud that her mother was able to do such a strong act and other times terrified that the first thing her mother did when she was born was cut her tongue. After asking her mother why she would do such a thing she learned that her mother did it to help her speak any other language without difficulty. Instead of being an aide in helping her speak clearly it seemed to do nothing. When she started school she had difficulty speaking english and frequently did not speak at all. Eventually she began going to a Chinese School after her regular American school and their …show more content…

Each class I would go to I would have to switch the accent in which I spoke. It was difficult because Spanish and French were similar in spelling but one was spoken with smoother edges and room for error while the other was rigid and precise. For each class we had an exit ticket that consisted of us speaking a sentence in that language. When it came to my turn and I had to read a sentence to go over what we learned that day in French and that day i decided to discard my usual routine of speaking slowly in order to maintain a clear enunciation. I spoke quickly not paying attention to the pronunciation and assumed I did fine because I was so used to it. Turns out several of the words I spoke were pushed out with a spanish accent. For example the French and Spanish word for garden are both ‘jardin’ but pronounced completely different and I chose the smooth spanish pronunciation. As a result I was given an extra page of homework and not given points for my exit ticket which at that moment felt like the worst thing. It also gave me a push to improve my pronunciation with different languages not only did I not want to be in a position like that again I also liked being able to sound like a different person with each language I spoke. The more languages you speak the easier it gets to pronounce others but the consequence is mixing pronunciation up and potentially saying something you do not

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