Mother Tongue and When I was PR – Manuel

Part 1:

“Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But 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.” – (par 5 pg1)

This quote demonstrates the author’s view in favor of the situation of their family speech pattern.

The view that few others had of Asian families, specifically parents that unclear English that author wants to protect.The lines of quote give emphasis on this how there more in the language then their family can speak and how it shapes their view on the world.”Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese” This line show the contrast view that other may have there is no language barrier just little hard to understand that not many would be willing to try understand.

I was saying things like, “The intersection of memory upon imagination” and “There is an aspect of my fiction that relates to thus-and-thus’–a speech filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, all the forms of standard English that I had learned in school and through books, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother. – nominalized:convert (a word or phrase, as a verb or adjective) into a noun, for example, output from put out ; the poor from poor.

So you’ll have some idea of what this family talk I heard sounds like, I’11 quote what my mother said during a recent conversation which I videotaped and then transcribed. – transcribed:transliterate (foreign characters) or write or type out (shorthand, notes, or other abbreviated forms) into ordinary characters or full sentences.

But it wasn’t until 1985 that I finally began to write fiction. And at first I wrote using what I thought to be wittily crafted sentences, sentences that would finally prove I had mastery over the English language. –wittily: in a manner characterized by quick and inventive verbal humor.

Part 2:

“After the first week she moved me from the back of the room to the front seat by her desk, and after that, it felt as if she were teaching me alone. We never spoke except when I went up to the blackboard.” – (pg 103)

This quote of Esmeralda demonstrates her journey proving her intelligence through the classroom. The pace that Esmeralda took from her education got her assigned seat move to front a display of her progression of moving up.”After the first week she moved me from the back of the room to the front seat by her desk, and after that”This quote also shows the quiet notice of the teacher seeing esmeralda potential.even though the situation for esmeralda isn’t what she plan there are mentors at her side helping her grow not always notice.

Other students stared at me, tried to get my attention, or pointedly ignored me. –pointedly: in a direct and unambiguous way, often indicating criticism or displeasure.

“What have I done?” I kicked myself with the back of my right shoe, much to the surprise of the fellow walking behind me, who laughed uproariously, as if I had meant it as a joke. –uproariously:in an extremely noisy and confused way: They laughed uproariously.

Half of them never showed up, or, when they did, they slept through the lesson or nodded off in the middle of Miss Brown’s carefully parsed sentences. –parsed:analyze (a sentence) into its parts and describe their syntactic roles. “I asked a couple of students to parse these sentences for me”