Amy Tan's How To Tame A Wild Tongue

Importance of Language
Language, in the simplest sense is a way to communicate with others, but more than that, language is way that I can express myself and my thoughts, which is why it's so important. It’s a reflection of who I am and where I came from. In How to Tame a Wild Tongue, Anzaldua explains that Chicano Spanish is a boarder tongue that “sprang out of the Chicanos’ need to identify ourselves as a distinct people.” (Cohen, 2017, p. 36) In Mother Tongue, Tan talks about how her mother’s “broken” English is their “language of intimacy, ... that relates to family talk. The language I grew up with.” (Cohen, 2017, p. 416.) Looking at theses essays, it’s clear that language isn’t just a way to communicate it’s an important part of my identity and culture.

This differs from the way that Anzaldua and Tan learned English. It was not their first language so I imagine that it was harder for them because they had to relearn how to speak. Anzaldua says “I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess - that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler.” (Cohen, 2017, p. 34) Anzaldua also shares that she was required to take speech classes to get rid of her accent. I moved to Minnesota from California when I was eight which means that I was used to speaking like a Californian. The way I said thing differed from my peers but I was never forced to take a speech class and I was surely never reprimanded.
The way that Tan’s mother spoke English was not how it was taught in school and that resulted in Tan scoring lower on English test because the way she heard english most often was different from the type of English taught in school. I have never had this problem because both of my parents went through the same schooling that I am going through so they learned to speak the type of English that I am currently being