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Post by Mr. Vitale on Jul 7, 2015 16:45:50 GMT
Write your responses to the essay "Mother Tongue" by responding to this thread.
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Post by cassfletcher on Jul 9, 2015 14:31:20 GMT
Amy Tan is a Chinese immigrant who has grown p with a different type of English that is commonly used by most people. Everyone always judges a person who is limited on their English skills because they originally speak a different language. We all complain about the hard-to-understand flight attendants, fast food workers, and even the regular day citizens that may come into your office. By reading this essay one may realize how difficult life for an immigrant may be. Yes they do not belong in America, hence being an immigrant, but these people mean well are American citizens just like us. What Tan is trying to say in tis essay is that limitation of language does not mean limitation of life, and she feels that because her family as limited to language, her life was pretty limited as well. She wanted to prove that wrong.
Tan was able to translate her English fairly well but her mother was not able to do so. Amy was able to understand her mothers English because that is what she grew up with. That is the way they spoke at home, it was their language of intimacy. She says "Language is the tool of my trade." This means that she needs English to be able to do her job. Most Asians were advised by their teachers to go more into the math and science field because of their improper English but Tan did not want to be labeled as a typical Asian because she new she was capable of the art of Language. As she became older she realized the way people stereotyped gave her a reason to do something that nobody believed was able to happen. She said, “Fortunately, I happen to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions made about me”. An English major is what she became and she started to write her own fiction novels. Tan overcame an assumption that was put on her by others and even herself because she was embarrassed at first when she had to do everything with communication for her mother.
Tan used her own personal emotions with logic that was able to back up the way her mother and her were treated. Tan says that some of her friends could never understand what her mother was ever saying but she could always understand. she said, "It's my mothers tongue." Her mothers language to her was vivid and clear with full observations of imagery. But nobody took that into consideration. Tan said that people in department stores, at banks, and in restaurants did not give her good service and pretended not to understand or hear even her. I can relate to this because I have seen things like this happen. Honestly I have treated people that do not make sense to me because of their accent differently than regular American citizens. Tan shared a story about how a brain tumor was found inside her mother after a CAT scan. When she went to the hospital, her mother claims that she spoke the greatest English she has ever spoken and still the hospital did not apologized to her when they lost her CAT scan results and she came for nothing. They would not even help her. He mother told the doctors that she was not leaving until they let her call her daughter and have her talk to them. Once the doctors heard the daughters voce and proper English they promised to find the CAT scan and apologized for her mothers suffering because of a regrettable mistake.
I have learned from this essay that there is no reason for judgment on a person who does not have the proper English. Nobody speaks the same, nobody writes the same and nobody looks at life the same. Everyone has their own perspectives. Amy and her mother wet through a hard time dealing with people who treated them differently because of their way of communication. After reading this essay I will never judge an immigrant the same ever again. Tan has helped readers realize what it feels like to be stereotyped. Taking the reader into her own experiences gives a sense of feeling that you are living her life while reading about it. You come to realize that not everyone is perfect and that does not mean that cant conquer an said to be unreachable task. Amy Tan proved to the readers that anything is possible if you believe it is.
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Post by sylvia on Jul 11, 2015 1:44:47 GMT
Write your responses to the essay "Mother Tongue" by responding to this thread.
“And perhaps they also have teachers who are steering them away from writing and into math and science, which is what had happened to me.” I had a similar situation happen to me in the 7th grade due to my switch in school and country! I believe that just because someone isn’t good today doesn’t mean they will not be good tomorrow. Just because one has failed countless of times doesn’t mean he will never succeed at it. I believe that once you have a dream, it’s worth fighting for; no dream is ever pointless. Amy’s use of language in this essay conveys a problem that society has tried on multiple occasions to dismiss.
The limitation of one’s language shouldn’t limit their rights and respect, ever. Mrs. Tan received unfair treatment due to her supposed “illiteracy”. Her boldness and unmovable personality were probably only a few reasons why she wasn’t totally wiped off the scene. People’s limitations have always been exploited and still are! I do believe that our generation and that of our parents have dealt with this situation better than previous generations. There are more programs and organizations that are helping the illiterate, disregarded, and handicapped. I reckon our generation isn’t that bad after all.
Can living circumstance have an effect on ways of life? Can it cause problems in their language? Does it help outsiders in their quest to become more knowledgeable about other languages? Yes, yes and yes. Regarding the environment in which Amy grew up in, she was bound to have some problems in her language and interaction with others. Her SAT and other standardized tests were sure to be affected by the English she spoke at home more than that which she learnt in class. It’s much easier to say “I ain’t got anywhere to go” than “I have nowhere to be,” mostly because that’s the kind of English we’re surrounded with. Writing is a way of expressing oneself, and it’s much easier to express with a daily language than an immaculate and edited language.
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Post by bcastellucci on Jul 23, 2015 18:17:51 GMT
In the essay "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan, her intention was to reach to the audience about the variations in the English language in this country, and others. She quotes, "I am a writer, and by that definition I am someone who has always loved language." Amy says that language holds a lot of power. "It can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade and I use them all- all the Englishes I grew up with." It was neat as a reader to read this and get inside the mind of a writer. You don't realize how important language and the different types of it can be to a writer.
Amy talks about "family talk," the language in which she grew up with, and how it affected her. She calls her mothers way of speaking, "my mothers tongue." She states, "her language as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world." You don't always realize how much the people that you grew up around would affect you in the long run. Amy's mothers tongue affected her in big ways that were good but at the same time limited the way she saw her mother. It bothered her that people underestimated her mother because of her lack of English skills. Her mother was often treated extremely poor in public and was put down becuase of her lack of proper English. Her mother realized the judgement of people around her as well as her daughter did, but she never lost hope and never let it get to her.
Asian-Americans as well as immigrants are underestimated for their language and are often called "limited." For this reason they are steered away from writing when they aren't actually even given the time to be taught and let learn. The author of this essay wanted to show how she beat the odds and became a writer even when her own mothers language skills were "broken." Amy and her mother proved everyone wrong with their segregating assumptions.
The authors point to the audience is that everyone is different, language, race, and all. You should never underestimate something someone can do over ethnicity or anything else. People will prove you wrong. I personally am inspired by Amy Tan and her mother. I can't imagine how tough it would be to be downgraded for the way you speak and be treated that way. It is sad that people would treat another human being like that because they are not like them. Amy's mom was powerful and strong and that pushed Amy to be the same way. Look at her now, she went against the stereotyping and became a writer. By telling us her and her mother's story it changes the way I now look at immigrants and Asian-Americans. They want life just as we do and still work hard to get it. They should not be underestimated by the way they talk. Stereotyping is a big problem in this nation, and people like Amy Tan are helping to get the message out on how wrong it is, and to share her story of how she and her mother ignored the people who put them down and did as they dreamed.
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Post by Alyssa Bright on Jul 28, 2015 18:48:06 GMT
As I began to read this essay, I was beyond confused as to what the author, Amy Tan, meant by the "different types of English" she and her mother spoke to each other and how her mother only understood certain types of English. I was so baffled that I considered forgetting about this essay and moving on to the next to respond to. But there was just something about the way the author talked about the "different Englishs" that made me want to stay with the reading. I then saw how Tan's mothers first language was not English but that of an Asian culture, and that was the reason why her English was so called "broken". This sparked a question in me when Tan said she used to be somewhat embarrassed of her mothers English speaking abilities and how she also felt limited by how good her mothers English speaking skills were. Tan says she now sees the way her mother speaks English as beautiful and perfectly clear and understandable. My question is, what all of a sudden changed in Tan's mind that turned something broken and limited into something beautiful? If I had one guess to attempt answering my own question, I would have to say that Tan realized there was a story behind why her mothers English was broken and why she even spoke English. Maybe she realized there was more to the story then what her mother may have told her. Tan I believe came to understand that there was a language and a culture her mom knew and loved before the language and culture she knows currently.
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kass
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Post by kass on Jul 31, 2015 2:43:35 GMT
"Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan was about a mother and daughter and their "english's". Amy goes on to describe how her mother's english is what some call "broken" but to Amy she understands her perfectly. This made me think of my family and I. We talk to each other differently then we talk to other people because we understand each other better. Sometimes my family knows what I'm going to say just by a look i may give or a motion i make. Families just have a sync like that and i think that is how Amy and her mother are. They've been together for so long that they know each other better than anybody else in the world. Amy now begins to feel this with her husband because they have been together for twenty years. It's all about time spent together and growing closer. I also experienced this with my best friend, we used to always be together and we began to finish each others sentences. We always knew what the other one was thinking and we constantly talked and would say the same thing at the same time. We have grown apart over the last two years yet we still talk almost everyday, and sometimes we text each other at the same time. We may have drifted apart but we are still best friends and still are there for each other.
Amy and her mother have definitely grown apart because she's been married and moved out for atleast twenty years now. They still see each other and talk just like me and my best friend, so they still have the connection to understand each other. Amy's mother has spoken that way her whole life so to Amy its normal, and she doesn't understand why some people treat her mother differently just because of the way she talks. People today would also be treated differently for maybe having a speech issue or for speaking what some call "different" just because its not the way they speak themselves. Amy's mother knew she was treated wrong and although she cared she was not changing the way she talked to satisfy others.
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Post by brandmbauer on Jul 31, 2015 6:46:27 GMT
Brandon Bauer
Mr. Vitale
AP Language 11
31 July 2015
Mother Tongue
Sentences and phrases can be spoken in many different dialects or languages, but are also spoken uniquely with every person’s own little twist. Sometimes a change in language can diversify or certainly enclose your surroundings depending on where you are located. Normally, a person is always more comfortable surrounded by their friends and family in their home town. Anyway, along these lines, a person may not be able to adjust to a new language, just as Amy Tan stated about her mother in the essay Mother Tongue. In correspondence to the article, unfamiliar words that are spoken may never catch on, whether you understand them or not.
Examining the mind of the author, Amy is able to distinguish the differences between her speech and her mothers through the “broken” or “simple” English grammar that she uses. As her mother states in the essay, “He come to my wedding. I didn’t see, I heard it. I gone to boys’ side, they have YMCA dinner. Chinese age I was 19.” Obviously, this is not the kind of grammar that any person who grew up speaking English would have, but she grew up speaking Mandarin Chinese, whereas the author did not. Amy Tan is trying to portray this obstacle as not a broken or unintelligent dialect, but as a much simpler way of saying things and still getting your point across to most people.
With this setback Amy’s mother is facing, there are of course many limitations to both Amy and her mother. Not only do people not take her mother seriously when it comes down to the nitty gritty, but Amy always has to talk it out with the outsiders for her mother. The disrespect directed towards different cultures or languages can sometimes be exceptionally ignorant and insulting. In the essay, Amy begins to talk about how one time she had to talk to someone on the phone for her mother, “I was forced to ask for information or even to complain and yell at people who had been rude to her … And my mother was standing in the back whispering loudly.” In this case, I feel bad for Amy, but she has never shook her head to the thought of assisting her mother because she has done it her entire life. Also, the fact that her mother cannot converse on the telephone without being interrogated is severely dismal.
Conclusively, the author just wanted to make an impression to her readers that you should never take someone else's race, religion, culture, or sexuality as granted because what if you were in their shoes. The theme or moral of Mother Tongue is one that everyone should take away with them before it is too late, because it is growing by the second in todays society. Overall, Amy Tan made this essay quite enjoyable through her personal experiences with her mother. Changes in language and culture can both diversify and blockade your surroundings, especially in the eyes of Amy’s mother.
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Post by madisonbailey on Jul 31, 2015 20:05:09 GMT
Mother tongue; noun; the language that a person has grown up speaking from early childhood. Amy Tan, the author of "Mother Tongue" describes in her essay how us, people, speak different languages in order to communicate with each other and by how much intelligence we have judges the way we speak as well. Tan grew up speaking various types of languages, English and Chinese. She would only speak Chinese while talking to her family which had impacted her childhood development and her 'mother tongue.' Since Tan's mother spoke Chinese more fluently than English, this was the cause of her "broken English." Due to the fact that Tan and her mother developed a special language to communicate with each other, it was harder on Tan to talk in a normal English conversation. This was a difficult time for both of these women because people would pretend to not understand the two due to how diverse their English was. Tan spoke more fluently in English than Chinese so her mother would make her talk to different people so any problem would be handled more clearly. Throughout the essay, Tan relates her problem growing up with an immigrant family to other children experiencing the same struggle. She mentions how Asian students are good at not only math and science but English. The cause for this would be the clash of cultures. Chinese culture values math and science very well but discourages English. Tan as well points out how having immigrant parents caused her to have a finite amount of English and how her mother used "broken English." Due to how math only has one right answer, Tan leaned more towards that when she was younger than English where she said that there was multiple answers. Because one of her bosses had told her that she was a bad writer caused by her upbringing with "broken English", it pushed and motivated Tan to switch to a English major in college and to write more. She may still have "bad" writing skills along with bad language skills but besides the point, it helped her to write stories for people like her mom who influenced her immensely and to be happy with who she is.
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Post by amandamoustafa127 on Aug 29, 2015 1:07:09 GMT
I definitiley related to "Mother Tounge" the most out of all the essays. Amy Tan took us on a short journey through her life explaining the difficulties and aggravations that she faced. One may say that the English language is one thing plain and simple but I agree with Tan on the fact that English is not cut and dry it is diverse and means something different to each person that you ask. From the beginning America has been the country of unique culture, due to the fact that it is made up of people from all different corners of the world.
This makes this essay rather relevant to the world today. We all have had the awkward experience of not being able to understand someone who we were conversing with and it frustrating and embarrassing for both people. I believe that Tan was expressing how neither one should give up and you can understand someone if you just give them a chance and take the time to listen.
A connection to this situation was immediately made when I thought about my dad. He was born in Egypt and moved here when he was just 17. This caused a language barrier due to the fact that Arabic was his first language. Now he speaks English fluently but there are still those rare times I have to tell someone what he's trying to say. He's an intelligent man but you do notice that he talks with slightly more simplicity and has a hard time pronouncing a few key words. I feel for Amy because I know how annoying it is when people look at you differently due to your parents ethnicity, thinking that you are somehow below them or less intelligent. Most people don't understand that if they went to a different country they themselves would be seen the same way and I think everyone needs to experience that and learn from it because more and more foreign people are moving here and we rely on them for our country to flourish.
It amazes me that someone wouldn't look for something as important as a CAT scan result because the person didn't speak the same as them. This is immature and horrible, and shows us as a society what we have to improve on. To me her mothers language seemed choppy but completely understandable which causes me to wonder why anyone would feel the need to degrade her. Mind sets like these will cause a riff in our communities.
Most Americans do not want to do the hard work that is necessary for the growth of the country, such as landscaping, farming, and food service, causing the need for these genuinely hard working people to be here. A lot are coming for a chance at a new better life with more opportunities, and if we keep shutting them up and looking down upon them, they will find somewhere else to go. Tan's went on the road less traveled and majored in something no one expected. I plan to follow in these footsteps and surprise the close minded people by showing them that I can become very successful even though I'm "the daughter of a foreigner".
Most authors try to hard to be "a great writer" by overusing complex words that are unnecessary and annoying to the average reader. Tan used simple vocabulary in this essay showing us that you can get your point across without looking in a thesaurus. This made the whole piece enjoyable to read for me and didn't take much effort to decipher what each word was trying to say. I applaud Tan on her ambition and courage and hope that people will open their eyes and see that America is unique and we must embrace that.
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Post by Zaclambert on Aug 31, 2015 1:43:25 GMT
Amy Tan explains how how she loved to write and how she began to realize how many types of English she uses when she writes. One day she was giving a speech to a group of people, the same speech she gives to all of the other groups when she realizes her mother is in this audience. Her mother does not speak very well English and it is hard for her to understand well put grammatical sentences. When Amy talks to her mother she speaks broken English so that her mother has an idea of what is going on. English is one of he hardest languages to learn and can be very confusing with our long alphabet. I can relate to this because my family and I travel a lot and when we go to foreign countries and try to speak English, we are looked at funny and sometimes even given dirty looks. Amy tan definitely tried to help her mother with her English as would I with my mother if that were the case.
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Post by marissakane on Aug 31, 2015 2:17:11 GMT
Write your responses to the essay "Mother Tongue" by responding to this thread. In "Mother Tongue" Amy Tan expressed the way her mothers language skills have shaped her into the person, and scholar she is today. This truly interested me because she expressed her emotions and thoughts towards her mother's use of the English language; and I feel like it is difficult for authors to try and make their audience feel their emotions or try to think of something in a similar way that they do. She goes on to talk about how the English she used in school was different than the English she used at home, with her immigrant mother. This made me think because, not only is this very true for people who grow up in bilingual households, this is true for me as well and I have grown up in a home that only spoke English. As a adolescent most of your time is spent either at school or home, so it is only natural for a child to develop different skills for each environment. Even if you only speak one language, you sort of are bilingual because you use the language so differently at times that it does not even seem the same. I am sure a rapper would not use the same structure for a sentence in a verse for a sentence in an essay. The slang and metaphors often used in households of different languages are not something you can simply teach in a book. This is why there is a language barrier between a native speaker of a language and a person who speaks it as their second language. It is difficult to learn a new language, because no matter how much time you put in to study the structure, the conjugations, the vocabulary words, etc., you will never be as gifted as someone who has grown up in a household with that language. It is because when you connect that language to a mother or someone deeply connected to you your perceptions of that language and how it connects to you change. It is funny to think about because you do not even realize how much your home language affects your language with other people and even your careers later on in life. I have often heard the stereotype that "Asians are better at math" but it never clicked in my head that it would have to do with the language spoken at their home. It makes sense because science and math are generally universal topics, while language is not. However, that did not stand in Amy Tan's way because she strived to study her weakest subject, which was literature. She broke out of her stereotype and her comfort zone to inform others of her fascination in language because it helped me see different views on things that I considered so simple.
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bobby
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Post by bobby on Aug 31, 2015 2:22:18 GMT
"Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan can be related to many people including children and parents. Most of us do not see it this way but English is one of the hardest languages to learn mostly because of the slang we use. If you are learning to speak English you are going to use it in a way that makes sense to you, just like Amy's mother. Amy was raised learning English the way her mother knew it so that's how she understood it until she began learning the language better.
This summer i have really seen the language barrier a lot, I am a lifeguard so you have all these different languages pop up on the beach whether you hear them around you or people have stuff they need to ask. Most of the time when people from other places have questions they either have trouble asking OR which i find interesting is they have their kids ask because their kids are learning English in school and can speak it better then their parents can. This relates to how Amy would have to "translate" for her mother over the phone. Thinking about it now i do understand why people would not take you seriously if you couldn't speak English the way they do, they see it as those who cant speak good English don't know what they are talking about except they do just in their own language.
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Post by skylartsosie on Aug 31, 2015 4:18:03 GMT
Just in the first sentence of "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan made me realize many things. Language is crucial for the average person to communicate to another. But what happens if someone does not know a language well enough to communicate? Are there limits to what they can express? I first handedly know this struggle. While learning Spanish in school, it was often hard to precisely say what I wanted to get across. Most commonly because I did not learn the specific word or due to the reason that not all English words can accurately be translated into Spanish and still have the same exact meaning. This is not only difficult on my part, I bet it was painful for the teacher and its takes a lot of patience. I can also related to Amy Tan on the account that my father also speaks a form of broken English and so does the rest of his family because English was not their first language, and due to growing up on a Native American reservation, they had to learn English at a much older age than the normal American child. Most words my dad says are pronounced a little bit different almost like he is speaking with a Texan accent. I feel as if my dad and plenty of other humans like him are taken advantaged or thought less of an "American" because their English is not perfect. But when I think about it, not having the perfect speech, like most of us think we do, makes them the reason why I look up to them. Seeing them accomplish something so much makes me to want to learn my native tongue and eventually speak to my dad and my family and have absolutely no barriers when it comes to finding the right words. |
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Post by kadindonahue on Aug 31, 2015 19:16:46 GMT
In the essay "Mother Tongue" Amy Tan describes life communicating with her mother who is not used to speaking english the way her daughter is. Learning a new language is not an easy thing to do, especially when you grow up speaking a completely different one. But even once that language is learned the full concept may not be understood. As in Amy Tan's case her mother would speak what she called "broken english". Although her english did not look terrible, it was missing a few words and had a couple grammar mistakes that made it sound a lot worse than what it really was. This goes to show how hard it is to learn a new language growing up with a completely different one.
When people move from country to country they need to learn the native language in order to communicate with others. However once that language is learned they sometimes do not sound the same as others. When these people to do not sound the same they tend to get taken advantage of. Amy writes about a similar situation when her mother had Amy talk on the phone for her with a stockbroker because he was two weeks behind on sending her a check. Because of her speech she was immediately taken advantage of by the stockbroker and needed the assistance of her daughter who spoke perfect english. I believe Amy is trying to tell us as readers that we shouldn't take advantage of people because they sound a little different.
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Post by lillyswan on Sept 1, 2015 0:13:01 GMT
In Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, Tan shares some information about her mother-daughter relationship. Her purpose of writing the essay was to talk about English language. Tan describes they way her mother talks as "broken" English and how that has affected her.
The "broken" English creates a separation from Tan's mother to other people but it also creates a bond between Tan and her mother. "But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It's my mother's tongue," Tan explains. The words perfectly, clear, and natural shows that her mother's language is flawless and completely understandable to Tan. Tan's mother might be foreign to other people but there is no separation between Tan and her mother. The "mother tongue" is what Tan knows and it has shaped the way she sees the world.
However, Tan's mother's language was difficult for others to understand and that created problems. One time, Tan's mother went to confront a manager and Amy said, "I was sitting there red-faced and quiet." This imagery shows how embarrassed Tan was when her mother was shouting at the manager in her imperfect language. Tan's mother's language had affected her life.
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