Mother Tongue

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Recommended: An essay on bilingualism

There are many bilingual and multicultural people in the world today. For many, the choices of which language they use, and how they use it, correspond to what social or cultural community they belong to. Amy Tan, a Chinese American novelist, portrays this well in her short essay "Mother Tongue." Tan grew up in two vastly different worlds, using different "Englishes." The first world, which consists of her close family, she speaks what we may call "broken" or "limited" English. The second world, which is her business and professional world, Tan speaks and writes perfect standard and academic English. Having to "shuttle" between these two communities with very different languages has had many different positive and negative effects on Tan, and many other multicultural Americans who deal with similar things. I myself speak different "Englishes" as I move back and forth between my family and society. Tan never acknowledged her use of two different "Englishes" until shortly before she wrote "Mother Tongue." In her story, she mentions that she was giving a speech to a large group of people about her latest book "The Joy Luck Club," when she "remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. [Her] mother was in the room."(Tan 61) It was at this point in time when she paused, and discovered that she had unknowingly kept two social worlds apart by the use of her spoken language. She felt her speech was burdened with forms of English that she normally did not use with her mother. Even though Tans mother spoke "broken" English, Tan argues that her mothers' conversational skill "belies how much she actually understands. She reads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stock... ... middle of paper ... ...g. There are many more differences between my Vietnamese life, and my American life besides the linguistic barrier. At home, I am my mothers' quiet but sassy Vietnamese daughter, who pays respects to her elders, and acts like a lady. In American society, I am quite loud, sometimes obnoxious, a tomboy, and very independent. I believe that people who come from this type of multicultural background benefit greatly from these seemingly embarrassing moments. People who glide back and forth tend to adapt easier to change, we become much more independent, and determined to prove societies bad judgments and misconceptions wrong. Like Tan, many benefit from a "split identity" by learning to accept and appreciate both worlds at full value. So Tan, like so many other multicultural Americans, uses her different linguistic worlds to associate with different cultures.

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