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Amy Tan Mother Tongue Summary

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Amy Tan Mother Tongue Summary
Amy Tan's excerpt Mother Tongue focuses on her use of different Englishes when she was surrounded by different people. When surrounded by strangers, Tan spoke fluently in grammatically sophisticated English. However, Tan referred to the English she used with her mother as being a broken down, limited version of the English language. Despite this description, Tan didn't entirely agree with what these chosen adjectives suggested about her mother's English & intelligence. Tan's description of the different kinds of Englishes she found herself using reminded me of my own varied English use. Though my family is not fluent in a foreign language, my roots & heritage lie down south towards the border. Here we have a very country, slang-filled English
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