In Amy Tan's 'Mother Touge" there is a lot of comments on race and ethnicity. Tan’s mother goes through a lot because of the way she talks. In the story Tan refers to different English's to which she uses on different crowds. When she is talking to a group of people at a press conference or an interview she is using correct grammar no slang and is very clear. However, when she talks to her mother she talks in a way that her and her mother both understand what each other are saying and kind of sound the same. When she realizes she does this she notices that no one else including her husband has a really noticed it. To me I think that Tan was trying to make her mother feel comfortable with her accent by talking to her with improper English. Maybe Tan feels that if she talks this way her mother will have more if a home feeling and an easier time in America. One thing that I found interesting was how certain people can understand half of what her mom says, most of what she says or none of what she says. I think that this comes with the background of people. America is a country with many different races so some people may have family members who do not speak proper English and have this improper English so they are used to what they mean. In the story Tan has to pretend to be her mom for a phone call with a stock broker. The stock broker get s her mother angry and she ends up going to New York. When they go to New York her mother is yelling at this man in her improper English. No one really knows how much of this the man actually understand and if he really cared that he was being yelled at, and I feel that he was also trying to take advantage of the mother since he knew of her race.
-Alex Lopes
Mother Tongue actually reminded me a little bit of, Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood. In both stories, language is a barrier as well as an intimate tool. In Mother Tongue, although they speak a "broken english," it is the language in which Amy and her mother feel most comfortable with at home. In Aria, the narrator feels most comfortable at home with spanish. Outside of their home setting, language becomes a barrier for the characters in each story. One because they are learning English and in Mother Tongue, Tan's mother does not speak English well, so communication is difficult.
ReplyDelete-Jordan
Mother Tongue is not only a story about race and language barriers but it is also about comfortability within a family. When Tan was younger she said that she was embarrassed when her mother spoke broken English. But as she gets older she realizes that when she is around her mother the way that she speaks becomes very different. When she is young she is embarrassed by her mother but as she ages she realizes that she sometimes talks exactly the same when she is around her. When you talk about the language barrier in your piece you are 100% correct. It is hard for her mother to communicate with many people and Tan acts almost as her translator.
ReplyDeleteJordan, I'm glad you also made the connection to "Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood", because in both pieces they feel an intimacy in the language spoken in their homes. Also, like Alex mentions, I think a lot of this story focuses on the struggles of minorities in America. In "Mother Tongue", the mother's "broken English" causes her to be treated like an inferior very often. It's unfortunate, but I have definitely seen this happen many times.
ReplyDelete-Amanda
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ReplyDeleteI like your comparison to Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood, Amanda because when I read mother tongue the same thought came to my mind. The language barrier that actually seperates people farther from society than just language. They are looked upon as outsiders to the rest of society, even in such a diverse country as America is, it is still the social norm that English is the spoken language, at least in public. Even speaking broken English, really does seperate people like Richard Rodriguez and Amy Tan's mother.
ReplyDeleteNick