Mother Tongue By Amy Tan Analysis

Amy Tan is a writer who is fascinated by language in daily life. Amy starts aware of the different English she does use. It is a speech about her book and she had already given to half a dozen groups of people. But the main difference is her mother is there too. She realizes that it is perhaps the first time her mother had heard her give a lengthy speech using the Standard English that she learned at school and through books. A kind of English she had never used with her mother.

Amy realizes again the English she does use again when she is walking down the street with her mother and her husband. Her husband doesn’t notice any switch of her English. This is because they’ve been together over the twenty years. They’ve often use the same kind English to each other. It had become their language of intimacy.

Amy shows her mother’s grammar by quoting a conversation of her mother, which is talking about her past. It is full of grammatical mistakes and it’s quite difficult to understand.

Although her mother speaks broken English, she can read and listen standard English without difficulty. For example, she reads Forbes report and listens to Wall Street Week. In her option, she thinks her mother’s English is perfectly clear and natural. It’s her mother tongue. Also, she thinks her mother’s language is vivid and full of observation, its helped shape the way she sees and makes sense of the world. But some of Amy’s friends they get a different understanding of what her mother says. Some of them say they understand none of