Mother Tongue by Amy Tan - Essay Example

?Mother Tongue by Amy Tan I have chosen to use for the first part of my comparison essay, the article Mother Tongue by Amy Tan. The reason I chose this is quite simple. I can identify with her struggles to learn the socially acceptable form of English speaking while having to deal with “bastardized” English speaking at home. The combination of which would cause any normal child's head to explode as it tried to sort out the mess of an English language that swarmed inside her brain. In the end, Ms. Tan managed to sort herself out and find her true calling as one of the few best selling Asian American novelists. That part of her journey is what she speaks about in this article and it is also what drew me into reading it. It is a highly engaging and contemplative look at how English is truly a living and breathing language that will evolve with society as long as people speak the language. Public and Private Language by Richard Rodriguez The story of the Americanization of Richard Rodriguez is one that is highly too familiar and painful for most students in American schools who come from Non-English speaking households. Just like Amy Tan, he and his parents had to learn to speak English together, but with the child learning faster and more comfortably than the parent. His story is one of heartbreak as he recalls how his parents were forced to bury their mother tongue by the educational system. Something that they did only because they wanted to insure the future success of their children. Even if it meant creating a rift within their own family and growing apart because of language issues. It is a story that asks one to think about bilingualism in a different light. Is it really proper for a child, who grew up in a non English speaking household to be told to forget that language because it is not the mother tongue of the nation? It would seem like a child would easily be able to grasp the English language while in school and other social settings because they are exposed to English speakers longer than they are to the other language speakers in their homes. But that is what makes this particular piece an excellent comparison companion to Amy Tan's own story. These two authors actually led the same bilingual lives and problems in different settings. That will definitely make for an interesting point of comparison later on. Points of Comparison 1. Both came from non English speaking homes 2. Both had parents whose grasp of the English language was quite weak. 3. Both overcame the odds in learning English in order to become successful in their chosen careers Possible Thesis Statements 1. The influence of non English speaking parents on first generation American children 2. Reasons why bilingualism is not a bad thing for children 3. English as a mother tongue does not need to be forced upon bilingual children because of social and academic factors. Bilingualism and Its Impact on Parent - Child Relationships Noted authors Amy Tan and Richard Rodriguez, authors of Mother Tongue and Public and Private Language respectively, have something in common which most people may not realize at first. They are first generation Americans who come from non-English speaking homes. Their parents both had an almost non-existent grasp of the English language and the great language divide served as a barrier towards their having a closer, more productive relationship with their parents. This separation of parent to child happened because Amy and Richard, both product of American schools, were forced to learn to speak English in order to become socially acceptable in their world. English was going to become their default mother tongue whether they liked it or not because their social life and future careers depended upon it. It did not have to be forced upon them like it was just because our school system was afraid that bilingual kids would not learn how to speak English properly. Within this essay, I will discuss the three similarities between the two authors. These similarities are: 1. Both came from non English speaking homes 2. Both had parents whose grasp of the English language was quite weak. 3. Both overcame the odds in learning English in order to become successful in their chosen careers Amy Tan's mother was a woman who, though extremely shrewd and brilliant in terms of business, was ashamed to speak the English language because she did not feel comfortable doing so. Her English was so bad that she often had Amy represent her in negotiations where she did not have to face any people. Somehow she did not feel a need to learn how to speak English properly and as such, Amy did not feel any need to speak to her mother in proper English sentence structures either. That is what felt normal around them and that is how it was. In fact, Amy was so used to speaking to her mother in bastardized English that when she finally became an accomplished author who had to give professional speeches as personal appearances, she found herself amazed at how well she could speak the language. Which made her wonder about what her mother would think if she ever heard her speaking that way. She even wondered as to whether her Chinese was as bad as she thought it sounded to her because she barely spoke Chinese and did not doubt that her Chinese sounded like her mother's bad English. Amy was lucky though, at least her mother tried to speak English unlike the parents of Richard Rodriguez. Richard on the other hand was part of a household that spoke only Spanish. That was his parent's native tongue and they did not feel any need to learn conversational or written English because the need for it never came up for them. In his household, English was the foreign tongue and Spanish was the lingua franca. It was easy to understand why. They lived in a Spanish speaking area and did not really need to speak in English to the people they dealt with. However, Richard had to go to school and read, write, and speak in English. The situation he had at home concerning languages did not help him any at school as he struggled through his classes to the point where his teachers had to come to his home and order his parents to speak to him in English so that his academic performance would improve. This is a situation that Amy Tan was also all to familiar with. When Amy was in grammar school, she too struggled with her English language studies. She breezed through her Math and Science classes because those had definite answers to posed questions, unlike the English language that had choices in answer to questions. It was this struggle in her life that she blamed on her mother. It was her mother's fault that Amy Tan could not speak the single public language properly. The Chinese culture and language was becoming a hindrance in her life. As Amy put it in her essay “Mother Tongue”: I think my mother's English almost had an effect on limiting my possibilities in life as well. Sociologists and linguists probably will tell you that a person's developing language skills are more influenced by peers. But I do think that the language spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular, plays a large role in shaping the language of the child. And I believe that it affected my results on achievement tests, I.Q. tests, and the SAT. While my English skills were never judged as poor, compared to math, English could not be considered my strong suit. (Tan 2) How could English be judged her strong suit when her young brain was struggling to learn two languages that had no similarities between them whatsoever? At school and with her friends, Amy had to speak in almost perfect English. While at home, she had to speak to her mother in Chinese. She grew up caught between two worlds and the casualty was her skill in language development. She became more and more alienated from her mother and family as she learned to speak English properly in public. Richard Rodriguez also recalls a similar experience in his own essay Public and Private language. He sadly recalls how his parents quest to help him learn how to speak proper English ended up destroying the close family bond that they had when everyone just spoke Spanish at home. He recalls: But the special feeling of closeness at home was diminished by then. Gone was the desperate, urgent, intense feeling of being at home; rare was the experience of feeling myself individualized by family intimates. We remained a loving family, but one greatly changed. No longer so close; no longer bound tight by the pleasing and troubling knowledge of our public separateness. Neither my older brother nor sister rushed home after school anymore. Nor did I. When I arrived home there would often be neighborhood kids in the house. Or the house would be empty of sounds. (Rodriguez 2). This is the bond that these two notable authors share. Their quest for a single public language forced them to let go of their family's private language. By doing so, they lost that one immensely important link between family members, the gift of understanding through speech. Gone was the language that made the non-English speaking parents comfortable around their children. Without their common language, these parents no longer knew who their children were. The parents chose to understand that they would be alienated from their children once they stopped speaking in Chinese or Spanish because that was the only way to assure their children of a better future as an American. Perhaps that is why both authors regret losing touch with their parent's primary language. They may have gained recognition as an American when they finally began to speak proper English, but they lost something much more in the process. They lost their link to their parents and that all too important connection to their family roots. Alienation from their parents could have actually been avoided. If only their teachers had not rushed them into learning the English language. Children spend more time at school with their English speaking classmates and adults than they do with their parents and neighbors at home. They would have become primary English speaking people whether they wanted to be or not because that was the dictate of society. If only things had happened at its own pace, both Amy Tan and Richard Rodriguez would not have the sense of alienation and guilt that they feel now over the loss of their relationship with their parents. Works Cited Rodriguez, Richard. “Public and Private Language”. n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2011 Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue”. n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. Read More