Amy Tan Broken Language Summary

At first in her passage, she presents us her thoughts about English language. She realizes that when she is with other people her English is lot different than the ways she talks with her mother. Similarly, the way her mother talks to her and she would understand but when her mother talk to someone they wouldn’t understand her “broken” English. She tells us the different circumstances and struggles when her mother had been ignored for her English. One scenario, she recalls speaking on the phone, pretending to be her mother so that the stock broker would be understand what the problem was and the demanded for the overdue money. This demonstrates one person living of broken English requires another person speaking to peruse into fixing the situation.
To everyone else her mother’s broken language was considered useless and wouldn’t get her anywhere “Her language as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery.” Amy Tan is simply saying that because of her mother’s language barriers she was able to form who she is
Since tan’s mother cannot speak English fluently, they have developed a special language to communicate. This showed Tan that speaking in a different language with her mother caused problem for her in normal conversations When Tan was young, her mother would make her talk to different people so the problem or the situation could be handled more clearly. After dealing with her diverse mother, Tan believes that language spoken in families, especially immigrant families, plays a huge role in creating a language for children and it will affect their lives in the future. Tan mentions Asian students being good in math and science but are skilled in English. Tan says that this has to do with culture because in chines culture, children are always introduced to math and science very well but are discouraged when it comes to English. Tan also points out that as child with immigrants’ parents; her English was limited due to her mother’s culture and broken