Mother Tongue - Opinion Column

Opinion Column:

In Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue”, it tells us that language does indeed have an effect in our lives. Language helps us communicate, helps understand one another and learn more, I do believe that Language is somewhat important because obviously we need language to communicate with one another and also we need language so we can learn, also learning foreign language is a good idea so we can learn more of that languages countries and its traditions and culture, basically without language, we are voiceless. In Tan’s “Mother Tongue”, she discusses how her mother's “broken” english has put several issues and impacts into her life. Tan discuss on how her Mother's English is Broken and as Amy grew up her mother’s English limited her perception of her, and she was unfortunately ashamed of her Mother’s English, her mother's “limited” English effected the way people would treat her mother, for example, Amy tells “The fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her or even acted as if they did not hear her.”, this text from “Mother Tongue” tells its readers on how people could judge you based off your limited English. Amy also tells us on her text that Asian-Americans are never represented in American literature but rather enrolled into engineering, maybe the reason of that is because of the individuals broken English, and it is also stated that Asian Americans do better at math tests than english tests. However, due to their limited english they most likely had teachers who are steering them away from writing and more into math and science, which is exactly what happened to Amy Tan. The main idea of Amy Tan’s text is telling us that even if a person cannot speak fluent English, does not mean they are less intelligent than those who are fluent to the English language, I strongly believe that no matter who we are we cannot judge anyone, because nobody is perfect and we all have our flaws. Also, I wish that people would understand a person's position, although we are not too sure on why Amy’s mother moved to the United States, we are aware that some people move countries for a better future for themselves and their children and that some people move with having little knowledge to the English Language. So rather than tolerating their broken and limited English, help the person out instead.