Amy Tan’s narrative essay “Mother Tongue
(1990) Tan informs her audience that although a person can come from a home
that does not speak the accepted language, their learning capabilities to
improve their grammar skills are not limited. Tan writes about how it she spoke
in many “different Englishes” in situations to appeal to the appropriate
audience whether it was around family or outside the home. Amazed and curious about
language and how it had influence on the way she was brought up, Tan brought
her audience back in time to her upbringing where she begun to show examples of
how her mother spoke and how she translated it the correct or “main-stream” way
of speaking, in order to prove that English is deeper and far more powerful
than just knowing how to speak it correctly. Tan’s audience is the person who
she can picture reading what she writes understandably, for example her Mother.
I agree with Amy
Tan’s description of second-generation immigrant children’s struggle with
linguistics. Her recollection of scenarios where her mother was misunderstood
although she was she was relaying clear ideas in the most direct and clear way
she knew to. I am touched by the sincerity Amy Tan used when interoperating for
her mother when a message needed to be relayed clearly. She would convert her mother’s passion
funneled into the whole filled container that was her grammar and vocabulary,
into intelligent, polite, direct, and effective speech. Her interpretation
suggests that she is delivering her mother’s messages as if they were
originating from her own will. In this way she is upgrading her mother’s will
with love and care. I feel that she truly cared for her mother and was deeply
concerned that the desired outcome her mother sought after manifested.
Way the text is written gives a
first person perspective on living as a second-generation immigrant adapting to
life in the linguistic challenges of living in the United States. When Amy
interoperated her mother’s message in her own words, when speaking with the
stock broker in New York, she was able to create the desired effect over the
phone rather than the expected miscommunication and misunderstanding that what
would have been created had her mother been on the phone. Rather than the
statement “So mad he lie to me” (Mother Tung) and “What he want, I come to New
York tell him front of his boss, you cheating me?”(Mother Tung), She converted
her passion in to articulate speech stating that her mother was concerned and
restating the agreed upon date that the transaction was to occur, and regarding
her mother’s threat to expose the violation of the contract by stating “I can’t
tolerate any more excuses. If I don’t receive the check immediately, I am going
to have to speak to your manager when I’m I New York next week”. Amy Tan has an
ear for what is being said essentially rather than on the emotional surface and
she displayed this skill in “Mother Tongue.”
