El Hadji Lam   

Freshmen composition  ENGL.110                                                

Professor Alcala 

  Cheat Sheet 

Amy Tan’s personal essay titled “ Mother Tongue” expresses how society judges people about the way they speak and make fun of them.To do so, Amy uses personal anecdotes by talking about her Chinese mother and how she was getting less attention because she spoke limited English and people don’t prioritize her needs. In addition to this, Amy mentions how there is a stereotype placed on Asian-Americans that forces them to believe they will never master the English language, instead, they should focus on math or science. We see this when, She states ‘’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.” After reading the whole text I agree with her. People are being bullied due to their accent. It’s not our fault for not having a perfect accent.

Personally speaking, I agree because I had experience about what she wrote but at some point i don’t give a damn about what people say. I just do me and anyone who has any issue with it deals with me. From my point of view, this proves that we are living 9in a broken society where they only prioritize others because they don’t have something that others do. Well that’s not the case here we are built differently and for start we didn’t build ourselves so we cannot have everything we want. Additionally, this is discriminated between us. I believe that language is a way for us to  make a bond between one another. However, if we criticize other speech we are just doing the opposite and this leads to humankind hating each other. Another word is racism or discrimination. “But to me, my mother’s English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural.It’s my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world.”She expresses here that language is also a great connection that bonds people together.  She wants all people to be treated the same way even though you have a hard time understanding them. You don’t really need  to be mean to someone because they lack something. We are not perfect, that’s what makes us human. It’s fine to make mistakes, to not have a good accent. All that matters is people understand each other and be nice one to another.