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Similarities Between 'Se Habla Espanol And Mother Tongue'

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Akira was 12 when his family moved to the United States. He spoke some english, but there were so many words he didn’t know. He didn't understand half of what people told him, and he couldn't help but feel like he didn’t belong in this strange new world. Akira was a fast learner though, it took him less than two months to be able to hold up a conversation with his friends, and he had no trouble paying attention to his teachers in class. While he does understand the language now, he had an extremely tough time before he learned it. What Akira went through is known as a Language Barrier. There are so many people who aren’t as fortunate as he was when dealing with that barrier, and they must suffer because they can’t break it down. “Se Habla Espanol” by Tanya Barrientos and “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan are two articles about people who went through similar situations to this one. Both of these …show more content…

In both “Se Habla Espanol” and “Mother Tongue” their thoughts on the languages transition. In “Se Habla Espanol” Tanya starts off wanting nothing to do with her heritage and the spanish language. She could almost say she was ashamed and afraid of what accepting that part of her would mean; however, as time passed and the world changed , she eventually wanted to changed with it. In order to feel like she belonged somewhere she choose to learn to speak spanish and accept who she had been all along. (Se Habla Espanol 629- 632) Amy felt somewhat similar to how Tanya did. In “Mother Tongue” Amy describes how when she was a child she was always “ashamed” and “embarrassed” of the way her mother talked. As she matured she was able to realize that there really is nothing wrong with her “mother’s english”. She even goes as far as using her “mother’s language” to write her book; she wanted to capture “her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts.”(Mother Tongue

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My understanding of Coming into Language “Coming into Language” is a book by Jimmy Santiago Baca, that talks about the struggles he had to face as a young illiterate Hispanic male. As a “Chicano”, he had to deal with prejudice from an early life and as a result, had frequent run-ins with the police. At the age of seventeen he was arrested as a murder suspect because he refused to explain how he got a gash on his arm. While he is in prison, awaiting trial, he listens to other prisoners reading out loud and that is when he starts appreciating written language. Two years later, he is again behind the bars facing drug charges and a million-dollar bail.

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504 Words | 3 Pages

The power of language We all have some form of language limitations, no matter where we come from and what our background is. “Mother tongue” by Amy Tan and “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua both share similar themes in their stories that demonstrate how they both deal with how different forms of the same language are portrayed in society. In both stories they speak about what society declares the right way of speech and having to face prejudgment, the two authors share their personal experiences of how they’ve dealt with it.

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160 Words | 1 Pages

Class ESL 5 In the article, ”My English” by Julia Alvarez, the author wrote about her experience as she learn to speak English. Spanish was her mother tongue and struggled to speak English in the early phases. She thought that English was a form of Spanish, as there are different dialects in Spanish. Her parents spoke English when they didn’t want her and her siblings to know what was going on.

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438 Words | 2 Pages

“It’s the whole environment,” she replied. “All kinds of services are available in Spanish or Spanglish. Sports and after-school activities are conducted in Spanglish. That’s what the kids hear on the radio and in the street.” Until recently, immigrants made learning English a priority.

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813 Words | 4 Pages

On the other hand, in Richard Rodriguez “ Public and Private Language”, he talks about how people who are out in public they tend to speak in English and when they are at home they will speak in a language that makes them more comfortable. Both authors struggle in English but in different ways. Tan’s mother has hard time speaking English since it was not her first language.

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126 Words | 1 Pages

In the essay “ Mother Tongue”(1990), Amy Tan, the connections between languages and cultures have a purpose and value, argues that “ I am a write and by definition, I am someone who has always loved language”(79) the differents ways the one interprets the different languages. Tan describe the varieties of languages and the type of person who tries to understand when there is someone whose English was not their first language. Used examples in order to convey the importance of language ( Forbes report ) that her mother's read, (Wall Street Week) that her listened; those were the ways to strengthen their English as he could and had the ability to speak. Tan speaks to English language in a compassionate tone so they can relate.

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711 Words | 3 Pages

She talks about how her friends could not understand her mother 's talking but Amy thought her mother was good at speaking English. Amy states, "Some say they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother 's English is

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632 Words | 3 Pages

Language is a human system of communication with everyone and it values in our culture. We all have some kind of language barriers within us, no matter what background we are from. " Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan and "How to Tame a Wild Tongue" by Gloria Anzaldua shares similar themes as they both deal with how different forms of the same language are recognized in the society. Anzaldua and Tan are facing many barriers because of their difficulties with the language that they learned, in order to overcome these challenges, they needed to incorporate with their families so that these changes would not affect themselves but also their families.   When living in a family with parents that speak "broken English", it is always common to find hardships and challenges.

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1635 Words | 7 Pages

To be orphaned from my native language felt, and still feels, like a crucial decision” (Lin 6). Yiyun Lin is caught between letting go her native language and wishes she can speak both because they both identify her. She struggles on choosing one of them and having one of them as a memory or a dream. This not only becomes a struggle for her, but an eye open decision on solving the problem of how she can combine a private language into a public language. “English is my private language.

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1081 Words | 5 Pages

This evidence supports my claim since she explained how Mrs. Tan 's version of English was what taught her to understand the language. Amy also said, "That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world" (Tan, 2006, p. 21). Without Amy learning the descriptive language that her mother used, Amy would be less expressive of herself and not as vocally involved in the

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714 Words | 3 Pages

After reading Mother Tongue by Amy Tan, my perspective changed about the struggles for people who are not as good at English. All throughout this article Tan uses personal experience from her mom to show the readers the struggle while also using primary sources to back up her claim. All the evidence backs up her initial claim and as the reader your perspective changes after reading about how she personally was effected. The author 's main claim of Mother Tongue is to persuade people so respect people who struggle with English because she has serval personal connections, she has fact based proof, and she is an experienced writer on this topic and in general. All throughout the reading she uses many personal stories and personal experiences on how difficult it was for her mother to go through her everyday life.

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498 Words | 2 Pages

I started to play the game of how successful I could get without letting barriers stumble me. During my first years in this country I was put in classes that would help my dialect evolve, I was very attentive and eventually was able to grasp the English dialect, my Spanish accent almost unrecognizable. I always enjoyed learning, but this was a new challenge. A new language, new expectations, and all I could feel was the isolating sensation that burden me. All my peers seem to master the subjects at school and I would always admire those who shot their hand high, while I held my hand down on my lap.

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1906 Words | 8 Pages

Humankind has always dreamed of a happy, prosperous life and tried to find stable bases of social relations as well as tried to agree on rules of coexistence. Evidence of this can be found in the most ancient sources. One of the first descriptions of fair social life are in the famous works of ancient Greece thinkers (Hamedi Dashti 2014). In the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the question of the optimal social structure was embodied in various social projects.

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573 Words | 3 Pages

And I use them all- all the Englishes I grew up with” (Tan pg. 1003). Amy loved language, she loved listening to them and using them to talk. One day when Tan was giving a speech she realized how wrong her English sounded since her mom was in the same room. It wasn’t the

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370 Words | 2 Pages

The articles “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua and “Speaking to My Fathers Dead Dialect” by Joseph Luzzi both are about immigrants who immigrate to The United States for better life prospects and being faced various difficulties such as cultural imperialism, language, low self-esteem and identity construction. On analyzing the life of immigrants, it is primarily essential to indicate that socio-cultural and economic problems depend on their hopes to be integrated in new community. Integration process is somehow difficult because of native’s attitude toward immigrants is dissimilar. Along with socio-cultural and economic problems, the key one is language discriminations because immigrants have poor language skills so that makes

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