Amy Tan’s story “Mother Tongue” starts by the affirmation that she is not a scholar of English or literature. She is just a writer and the person who understand the power of language. From Tan’s observations from her daily life, she realizes that there are different types of English that she uses. The first time Tan notices the difference is when she gives a speech on her book “The Joy Luck Club” using academic English, the one that she never uses to talk with her mother. The second time is when Tan talked using “fractured” English unconsciously with her mother when walking down the street. After that, Tan recalls her memories from her early age: the phone call for her mother to the stockbroker, the meeting with a doctor in the hospital for her mother’s CAT scan result to demonstrate her mother’s realization of “limited” English. Then Tan agrees with the idea that language spoken in…
I believe it is totally wrong. For example, when my mother tries to speak English, sometimes she makes mistakes about pronunciation or cannot express her ideas properly and other people seem to look down on her. In Tan’s story, she tells the same situation happened in the hospital: the hospital has lost her mother’s CAT scan and her mother was defied because she did not speak English well until Tan met the doctor. To me, wrong pronouncing or inability to verbalize ideas does not show that a person is unintelligent or lack of education. The intelligence is reflected through the way a person deal with a problem, including all thoughts, passion and imagination. For this reason, in the end of Tan’s story, Tan says: “I knew I had succeeded where it counted when my mother finished reading my book and gave me her verdict: “So easy to read.” It proves that Tan’s mother is sharp enough to give Tan comments. She is not unintelligent like the way she…
