Rahat Hossain
English 110
Professor Vicars
Response to Amy Tan’s “Mothers Tongue”
The purpose of the writing mimics the title of the essay. The English language in our modern-day classrooms has been hallowed down to answering a bunch of bubbles on a scantron, using specific phrases from passages, and focusing more on comprehension of what is being read than expressing any creative ideas. This idea that language is the cornerstone for expressing incredibly rich ideas is even stated by Amy Tran when she says “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”. But is the language itself what provides this tool for expressing these ideas? If we speak broken or improper variations of such language, does that make us less “creative”, have “dull ideas,” or be unable to express ourselves? These are some of the topics that really resonated with me in Amy Tan’s essay. Amy’s childhood was very similar to mine, and her family background and experience with the English language were also very similar to mine. Her remarks on many Asian students going into fields of math and sciences instead of backgrounds in English or the humanities are also concurrent with the Asian community I myself grew up in. This, I believe, is mostly due to the difficulty we have as immigrants in grasping the English language when we are young. Amy also says that proficiency in the language is largely shaped by external factors such as community and peers. It struck me when she spoke about how she used to be embarrassed when she heard her mother’s broken English when she was a child, just as I used to cringe after watching my father try to strike up a conversation with the American neighbors down the street. But no form of language is ever truly “wrong” or “fractured,” as language itself is an extension of yourself and your ideas. I loved how Amy realized this as she got older and actually appreciated her mother’s variation of the English language. Amy herself uses different variations of English like her mother once did. She uses a slightly broken version of English with her husband. “It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk”—showing us that in many ways Amy is slowly transforming into what she once viewed her mother as. Instead of viewing her mother as “lesser” due to her broken version of English, Amy saw the love, intent, and emotion her mother was able to express through her “broken English”. This essay has made me reflect on how I view my own parents’ broken English, as it may be broken, but I would never want to fix it because it is perfect the way it is
