My mom who came from the phillipines still to this day has a strong filipino accent, that couldn 't be hidden even if she tried to. It was always crystal clear instructions when she spoke to me because she often spoke in Ilocano. However, although it was easy for me to understand, she still has quite a hard time getting her message across when she tried speaking with others who spoke english well. The gap between the way she spoke and others was a challenge I definetly had to face. You could say I was the mediater between the two. If she was trying to explain something but didnt have the right words in mind, I would be there to help her out. It was a challenge for me to constantly help her out, and I would often be frustrated with always having to give her the right words to say. But, that all changed when I saw students in my class mock another student of the same ethnicity because of his strong accent. I came to the realization that we shouldnt be ashamed from where we come from but embrace the beauty and struggle we rose from. I wasn 't ashamed of my mom but myself, I saw myself in …show more content…
It wasn 't my mother who needed to change the way she spoke, but it was me who needed to learn and relate respectively to my culture. Everything my mom is, is what I strive to be. Her patience, her compassion and her kind heart for such a stubborn daughter like me is what love is. Time, people and difference has made me forgotten about my mom who was raised in a different country with little opportunities. Although, I can never fully grasp half of the obstacles she faced when she was young, but I understood and supported the language barrier she faces today. I always will lend a hand to the hand that has taught me nothing but passion and dillgence. I thank my mom, for the times she spent dealing with a close minded daughter like
“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan is primarily an autobiographical piece about her experiences growing up in a household that chiefly spoke “broken” English, and a reflection on how this gave her a unique perspective on the transformative properties of language. Yet, it is no way an academic analysis, a deliberate choice, Tan even includes a short disclaimer in the beginning concerning this, and the excerpts she includes come from her own background, her personal observations, something which I found quite refreshing. As someone who comes from a mixed family and identifies as Asian-American, I related a great deal to her upbringing, and in many instances down to the exact circumstance. For example, she details an incident in which she
For example, when I was fifteen my family and I moved from our country, Iraq, to live a better live in the united states. Learning a new language was the biggest challenge that I have faced in my life. I have faced so many difficulties during my high school years regarding to the language. Studying, getting involved in some school activities, and communicating with people were the hardest things to me because of the language. Later, I remember that I started to improve my skills by practicing seven to eight hours a day.
IT’s imperfect or even incorrect in some places but mostly, it’s just a simplistic understanding of how English works. It’s still clear enough to understand if more people took the time to and it’s the first language she learned from her mother. She looked back at her own work and saw the overly worded and strict grammar, a way she only talked around certain people but never her mother. She realized that this English isn’t bad either, but neither is her mother tongue.
The struggle of language barriers play a huge role in my life. Once I became proficient in my second language, English, I automatically
We discussed every question that was required for American citizenship, and she never failed to amaze me with how diligent she was at learning a foreign language I was simply raised speaking. I always grew up learning and speaking one language, at home, at school, with friends, everywhere I went. My neighbors and friends were people similar to me, growing up in suburban homes in America with supportive parents and extended families nearby. While I read about different cultures, usually through my hundreds of books that I took to reading, transporting myself across the world,
The transition from eighth grade to ninth grade is one of the most difficult but unforgettable things a student must do in his adolescence. For me, it was filled with new opportunities of taking Ap classes and joining clubs. One of these cubs was Youth and Government (Y&G). For as long as I can remember my brother, Riad, has boasted about how amazing Y&G is and how it has changed his life. My brother is three years older then me, so as a freshman he was a senior in Y&G.
Out of Breath Becoming accustomed to a new language is difficult, especially when it is not one’s primary language. Amy Tan, the author of “Mother Tongue” went through this same situation. Tan’s mother had a hard time with the way she spoke English because no one seemed to understand what she wanted to convey. Amy Tan uses her story as a way to let the audience know about how language can lead people to be prejudice, connect people, change perception and open new doors in life.
As I began to learn to love my intersectionality of these two cultures. I began to love myself. I now speak more Creole than ever before. I may not have the best accent, and I do tend to revert by to English but i constantly try to improve and better myself.
Growing up, my dad would tell me stories of myself and how I learned English. When I heard these stories I always found them fascinating because, through those stories, I realized how much I have changed over the years. As a child, I grew up speaking different Chinese dialects. It was only when I went to school that I learned English.
It was not easy only knowing one language and going to a school that couldn't understand me and I couldn't understand them. My mother is Hondurena and my father is Mexicano both different but want the same thing. I grew up in America with my mother always talking to me in spanish so I would learn how to read, write and speak it. It was my first language I didn't know english at all I would always talk in spanish at home. I may have been born here but I am very much closer to my hispanic roots more than I am American.
Life As a Translator Like Tan, the author of Mother Tongue, I also am a translator in my family. My Mother came from central America, only arriving to America when she was around 12 or 13. As a result, she knew no English, and faced difficulty acquiring employment. The only job she was able to find was the typical immigrant jobs, working as a maid or waitress.
Writer and novelist Amy Tan in her essay “Mother Tongue”, narrates that speaking “broken” or “fractured” English is not a bad thing. Tan’s purpose is to show the readers her interpretation of different Englishes and what affect her mother had on her. Amy Tan builds a case in “Mother Tongue” that just because some people don’t speak English perfectly, doesn’t mean that they are stupid or ignorant. Tan uses metaphors such as “broken” (8) and “fractured” (8), these words are strong metaphors due to the fact that they give the reader an easy understanding of what Tan is trying to say. Tan uses these metaphors as a way of describing how her mother spoke, while trying not to offend her.
I grew up learning Spanish as my first language because that was my parents’ native language. I had to learn English in school and practice at home, but it was difficult when my parents could not help me. Therefore, I mostly kept to myself and puzzled over words that I simply did not understand. My parents understood that I was having a tough time in school because of my lack of communication skills and decided to place me into the English Language Development program in my elementary school so that I would not get behind the other students. This program appointed me to a counselor who would check my progress in class on a weekly basis.
In the fictional essay “Mother Tongue,” Amy Tan states that we speak diverse languages to communicate with each other and that our intellect is judged by the way we speak. She uses language as a way to observe experiences that assisted her in realizing the many “Englishes” she uses. Tan defines “Englishes” as Chinese-English. As a child Tan had to speak two types of languages because she was born in a Chinese culture. The first language she learned was “broken English.”
Language is a human system of communication with everyone and it values in our culture. We all have some kind of language barriers within us, no matter what background we are from. " Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan and "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" by Gloria Anzaldua shares similar themes as they both deal with how different forms of the same language are recognized in the society. Anzaldua and Tan are facing many barriers because of their difficulties with the language that they learned, in order to overcome these challenges, they needed to incorporate with their families so that these changes would not affect themselves but also their families. When living in a family with parents that speak "broken English", it is always common to find hardships and challenges.