“Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan

Amy Tan’s article “Mother Tongue” speaks about her different perceptions of the English language. In the article she says “I use [all] the Englishes I grew up with” (1) to show us that language is in the eye of the beholder; as she says in the first page “to me, my mother’s English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It’s my mother tongue. 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”. I know what it is like to have a limited English, and what it is like speaking “broken” English with a fluent understanding.  But while Amy had the privilege of speaking conventional English, her mother, despite being fluent in her understanding of English, was dismissed by condescending English speakers, who could not fathom that the level of a person’s speaking might not dictate their understanding, as Amy said “I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect” (2). Because they, unlike Amy, did not see English as a multi-faceted language but rather as a precise language with only one correct answer. What these people chose to ignore is Amy’s truth, that the language you grow around shapes you, and that they were in-fact speaking in a different English than their colleagues and neighbors, that they are also speaking a smi-broken English, and that English has no ‘one right answer’.