Mother Tongue and When I was PR Esha

Part 1

A quote that I found important is “I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language — the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade”. This quote is important because it tells us that the writer loves language and how it can show and express the emotions. It also helps to show that human creativity is facilitated by language. By using language we can tell how we feel, how we can express certain feelings and much more. It also tells us that she was not a native speaker and she isn’t afraid to tell that English fascinates her and it makes her feel more alive.

One vocabulary word I learned was in empirical which means based on or concerned with and the word is in this sentence “and I had plenty of empirical evidence to support me”. Second vocabulary word is vivid which means producing a strong or clear impression on the senses and is in this sentence “Her language, as I hear it, is vivid,direct, full of observation and imagery”. The last vocabulary word is linguists which means a person skilled in foreign languages and its in this sentence “Sociologists and linguists probably will tell you that a person’s developing language skills are more influenced by peers”.

Part 2

A quote that I found important would be “Don Julio had told me that if students didn’t speak English, the schools in Brooklyn would keep them back one grade until they learned it.“Seven gray?” I asked Mr. Grant, pointing at his big numbers, and he nodded”. This quote is important because it shows us that she doesn’t know how to speak English which made it a problem for her. She was stressed out because she had to go a grade back and she was arguing as well. It also tells us that later on she could read and write in English. Also she stunned the teachers by getting higher grades in all the subjects. She felt like she was a different person which shows us that reading and writing can make your confidence boost up a lot and make you feel much better about yourself.

One vocabulary word would be clutched which means grasp or seize something tightly and its in this sentence “I clutched my eighth-grade report card filled with A’s and B’s, and Mami had my birth certificate”. Another one would be parsed which means to analyze a sentence into parts and its in this sentence “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”. The last vocabulary word would be subsequent which means coming after something in time and it’s in this sentence “each subsequent drop in number indicates one notch less smart”.