There are thousands of languages in the world, such as Spanish, French, Chinese, English…However, No one can do better job in the second language than their mother language. In the article Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan emphasized her idea that we speak different languages unconsciously and we are categorized by the way we talk. The author talked about her mother who is a Chinese emigrant wanted to provide her daughter a better environment to grow up and spoke “broken” and “limited” English, but anyway, Amy can still communicate with her mother without obstacles.
Throughout the story Amy Tan uses pathos and ethos to tell us that how hard to gap the Asian American culture and still is for Asian Americans to work through the difficulties of the English languages. As a Chinese people having English for the second language, Amy Tan was difficult at times, but still. She overcome all the barriers and succeeds when no one thought she could. Even though that it will be extremely hard for us to succeed in a region that not belongs to us, but still there’s an opportunity for everyone to be a king.
To be successful, we have to adapt the environment around us and meanwhile make efforts as much as possible. Amy tan uses ethos to prove this point according to her sentence “I’m not a scholar of English and literature, I cannot give you much more than personal opinions on the English language and its variations in this country or others. ” Basically, she’s explaining that although she is not a native speaker, she still became an English writer and be succeed somehow.
The Essay on Amy Tan Mother Piano Story
Amy Tan's "Two Kinds" is an autobiographical look into her childhood that shows the conflict between Tan and her mother, the difference between old and new cultures, the past and the present, and parents' expectations vs. reality. Couples of opposing elements comprise the basis of the entire story; to another extent even the title itself, "Two Kinds," shows the friction that Tan creates. The ...
Amy Tan convinced people according to her own accomplishments that no matter where they are from, no matter what mother language they original own, they still have a chance to achieve an honor. People who speak “broken” or “limited” languages should be respected. Even though, they could not show their mind perfectly and confused others as well, they tried their best to prove themselves. After all, this is their second language, which need them, make huge efforts getting accustomed to it. In her book, “Mother Tongue”, Amy Tan tells us an experience in the ospital when her mother went to the doctor to get the result of CAT scan.
The doctor despised her when she was complaining them about losing her scan result. It was not until Amy Tan talked to the doctor that they apologized and cared to solve the problem. Amy was fill with anger when she wrote “…and apologies for any suffering my mother had gone through for a most regrettable mistake. ” Amy is insisting that people not taking a person seriously because their “broken” language can have dangerous consequence. In summary, people should be respected any way even if they cannot use it freely.
