"MOTHER TOUGUE"

                 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.”