For Thursday: Tan's "Mother Tongue" (pp.232-237)
Answer TWO of
the following...
1. What does Tan
mean by the statement, made at the very end of the essay, that “I began to
write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with”? What are “Englishes” and how might this
relate to your own culture/language?
2. What larger argument is Tan making about
culture and language in this essay? How
do factors like the SAT’s play a role in supporting her argument? Consider her statement: “Math is precise;
there is only one correct answer.
Whereas, for me, at least, the answers on English tests were always a
judgment call, a matter of opinion and personal experience.”
3. Why do we call Tan’s mother’s English
“broken” or “fractured”? Re-read the
passage where she is narrating the story of her neighborhood. Why would Tan claim that this language is not
“broken” but culturally inflected speech?
Why, for example, might it sound “normal” to Tan?
4. What does she mean when she writes,
"that was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed
things, made sense of the world"?
How can a language change the way you see things ? Aren't things the
same no matter what language you use?
How can a language change your experience with life itself?
Hayden Blakemore
ReplyDelete1. Mrs. Tan was a lady that grew up in America learning all about the English language, but from a mother who only spoke a broken, or mixed, English with Chinese. At the end of her essay, Mother Tongue, Tan spoke about writing stories with the Englishes she grew up with, or all the different types of English she was taught and introduced to.
3. We would call Tan’s mother’s speech “broken” or “fractured” because she used the Chinese she learned as a child with the English and it didn’t sound right to those around her. Tan, however, would say this is not broken, but is a full sentence that made sense on the account that she had lived with it and understands when she is using Chinese instead of English. So instead of abnormal, Tan heard something that was perfectly normal and sounded grammatically correct.
Q.2
ReplyDeleteI think it goes along the lines of how, as much variety as we have in our culture, obviously no-one is going to be raised up the same way. This, in turn has an impact on their learning abilities while they are going through school, and how they perceive information in general. For home settings that have dual languages this would be especially hard, because the children may be speaking English at school, while speaking a different language at home. When talking about SAT’s and school, no two students will learn in the same manner, so one kid may comprehend algebra extremely well, while another may be able to understand politics just as easily. I think Tan is saying that the “culture” of someone’s home has a large role to play with how they learn different things and just how they perform in life.
Q.3
A lot of people would call her mother’s English fractured, just because to them it would sound like it was being spoken in pieces or almost incoherently. Just as Tan said that she herself called it ”simple” for the fact that she could not think of a better term to use. I don’t think her way of speaking is wrong, because to Tan’s mother that is the way English should sound. To her, this is the way that people should speak, and everyone else sounds strange and alien when they talk. It really just depends on where you come from.
Q.1
ReplyDeleteSince her mother could not speak English very well, she made her stories easier to read, as in simple. Tan grew up having to translate for her mother because of her mothers “broken English.” I sort of know how this goes because my grandmother on my father’s side is from France. I didn’t get to be around her much due to distance, but talking over the phone or visiting. My grandmother’s English was more advanced then Tan’s mother. Even so, it was hard to understand her because she did mess up a lot and a lot of the time, even as a child, I had to fill in the blanks that where left in my grandmother’s words. Also I have a neighbor who is Hispanic who speaks little English back home. It was very hard to understand her unless she had one of her children around to translate for her. For a while people ignored what she said or just couldn’t understand. After being around her all the time (I was friends with her children) I am able to understand almost anything she says (in both English and Spanish) and the same can be said for her with my horrible version of Spanish.
Q. 4
When you have grown up knowing exactly what someone says at home and also knowing the correct way of the saying at school, makes it easier to understand people who cannot fully speak English. Thanks to being around my grandmother some as a child I was able to understand my neighbor (as I said in my response to Q.1). It shapes your understanding even though someone doesn’t mean the words they say. For example my neighbor could have said “Can I ride store?” even though she is asking “Can I have a ride to the store?” To most people that would just be a very weird question and they would probably assume something wasn’t right in her head.
3. We would call it "broken" or "fractured" because it lacks some proper English, but for someone who isn't English, and didn't grow up using English, its difficult to use English as the native speakers do. We have learned by being raised in it. She didn't have all of that time. That was more of a quick learning. It sounds normal to her because her mother used it while she was growing up, but she has also gone through American schooling, which gave her that second tongue of English language.
ReplyDelete2. I think that her argument is saying that those tests are geared towards those who have grew up in the "proper English mindset". Not for those who are foreign, and don't think the same way as we do. Like she said, "Math is precise, it only has one answer", where as, there is so many ways to perceive English, that there really isn't a right or wrong answer sometimes. Though there is, a lot of people do not think that way. There are many ways to think things, the brain works in all kind of ways. Those tests should be geared toward the individual more, instead of the mass. I think anyways.
Karina Tarpey
ReplyDeleteQ1: She makes the statement "I began to write using all the Englishes I grew up with" as a way to express that no English speakers speak the same English. There is slang based on race, gender, social standing. There are different dialects all throughout the USA, not to mention the world. There are families that simplify English, or families like mine, that use "big" words daily.
Q3: We call Tan's mother's English broken because she doesn't use as many adverbs as we do and to us it does not flow as easily as we would like it to. We call it broken and limited because it has different word placement than ours. Tan doesn't see it as broken because she grew up with her mother talking like that, possibly even her father. It flows just as easily as "regular" English to her. Her English is culturally inflected because her mother probably grew up speaking Chinese, which is much more of a choppy language than English.
Savannah Lincoln
ReplyDeleteQ1.
She says "all the Englishes I grew up with," because there are many kinds of English. Different cultures and different ethnicity's use different kinds of English. There are slang words, and words that are used with more of a legitimate use. One English word might mean something different to people from different places. People that aren't from America might not recognize the slang, therefore making it a different type of English.
Q3.
It's "culturally inflected" because the Chinese language isn't spoken the same way English is, it's more chopped up, words are used in different orders to make sense in a sentence. We call it broken because we don't hear it the same way as "normal" English. It's normal to Tan because she grew up listening to it, just the way somebody living in the south would develop a "southern accent" because that's the way they learned to say the words. She's speaking English just as we do, and Tan recognizes "all the Englishes," so she doesn't see it any different.
Adria Abella Villafranca
ReplyDelete1. What does Tan mean by the statement, made at the very end of the essay, that “I began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with”? What are “Englishes” and how might this relate to your own culture/language?
Tan says “I began to write using all Englishes I grew up” like an idea to tell us that all the English speakers don’t speak the same English. There are different English pronounces around the world. These pronounces aren't only different between the different countries that speak English, inside the United States there are many kinds of dialects of English. There is people that simplify English or use “broken English”. Tan explains that she had to grow up having to decode for her mother because her mother used “broken English”.
3. Why do we call Tan’s mother’s English “broken” or “fractured”? Re-read the passage where she is narrating the story of her neighborhood. Why would Tan claim that this language is not “broken” but culturally inflected speech? Why, for example, might it sound “normal” to Tan?
Because in my opinion I think that the Tan’s mother’s is “broken” or “fractured” cause of she spoke a mix with English and Chinese. Another reason is because to us (and to Tan) the mother Tan’s English would sound like it was being spoken in parts and incoherently. I think that Tan mother’s English is “broken” but I don’t think that she was speaking wrong. Everyone has its culture and the finality of one language is to communicate and if she was communicating well with the others its way of speaking wasn't wrong. To sum up, your way of speaking depends about where you are from and your culture.
Amber Simpson
ReplyDelete1.) Tan is saying that she has spoken English in many different ways. Each place is different, and if she’s moved a lot, she has picked up on different slangs and different accents. For example, people in Washington say “you folks” while people in Oklahoma say “y’all.” People from the south have more “hick” accents and people from the north seem to sound a bit more proper.
2.) If you are not from here, and you take the SAT’s, you will probably have a more difficult time passing the Language part of the test. This is because you are not 100% familiar with the way we say things. If the question on the test has a saying in it that you’ve never heard before, you may be extremely confused and not know which answer to choose. For example, the saying, “that’s harder than finding a needle in a haystack!” Maybe people from bigger cities don’t know what a haystack is. Or, maybe, if English is your second language, it could completely throw you off because you may take it literal. If you take it literal on a test, you’re out of luck because you can’t ask questions!
Andrew Jordan Nickell
ReplyDeleteQ1- There are different variations to every language. English is a predominantly spoken language throughout the world. With that being said, based on region and culture you will have any and every variation of English that you could imagine. Tan was raised by her parents who were Chinese-Americans. They had their own form of English that they spoke. So, this is what Tan learned. It may be different than what you and I speak, but it is still English. With the US being so ethnically diverse, there will always be 1000's of forms of English.
Q3- We would call that language broken, because it sounds different than ours. It doesn't sound the same as ours and she may leave out some words, so we call it broken. As a society, we tend to dislike and discredit anything that is different than what we are used to or call the "norm".
As I stated in the answer to question 1, there are many dialects of the English language. We all speak different forms of English depending on where we were raised or what culture we call our own. Even in just the US, there are probably tens of thousands of different forms of English. Chinese English is what Tan grew up around and was taught. This type of English is normal to her and her family. This is their English.
Faith Armstrong
ReplyDelete1. Tan was stating that she was using all the different dialect that she grew up with. She was alluding to the fact that there is no such thing as “English”. There are only many forms of it. “Englishes” are different ways that people say things. They use different words for the same thing or they pronounce the same word a little differently.
3. She doesn’t speak the same way we do. In our society, that is not proper and it’s different from the way we speak. Tan doesn’t think that the language is broken because her culture speaks that way, therefore, that is the way she speaks as well. She does not think anything about it being “broken” because it is not “broken” to her. It sounds normal to Tan because that is what she grew up around and that is what she knows. It doesn’t sound any different to her than our “English” sounds to us.
Q1: I think she is talking about all the Englishes that her mother used and the English she uses. The Englishes are the way her mother talks and the way she talks. I think this relates to me because it’s what I was used to growing up and the words and phrases used around me. Everyone has a different way they talk but it’s all the English language.
ReplyDeleteQ3: We call Tan’s mothers English broken because she does not use complete sentences and she can sound uneducated. I think Tan calls this culturally inflected speech because it has an accent that goes along with it. You can still understand her mother it’s just she has a different way of speaking English. I think it might sound normal to Tan because that’s what she has grown up with. She is used to the English her mother speaks.