Mother Tongue

"The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence" - Carl Sagan 

In Amy Tan's Mother Tongue, Tan shares the challenges in which her family had met upon settling into an English speaking country, when in fact, English was not their native tongue. Throughout the text, an array of issues was discussed. The article highlights what Tan, who could be considered as a fluent English speaker, had faced whilst helping her mother throughout her life. Which was the major conduit to her realisation of these said issues? A majority of these struggles prove to be transnational, as a class of 19 international students was able to make connections to their personal lives while reading this article.

Personally, as I am a bilingual speaker myself the issue with which resonated with me was that the ideology that in a matter where a person faces difficulty in translating their thoughts, they are perceived to lack the knowledge in the first place. Their "limited" ability to speak a language skews others perception of them. This could be identified as the inferiority complex, by which has subconsciously been expressed towards those who are perceived as speakers of “Broken English”.

It is human instinct to judge and classify other people; these subconscious impulses are why we want to categorize everything and everyone we are exposed to. A widespread tendency between practised English speakers is to brand those who speak “broken English” as an incompetent bunch, and predominantly this couldn’t be farther from the truth. This is one of the main causes of prejudice within our society. Unfortunately, these compulsions are ones that are built upon ignorance. People often forget that other than a person’s lack of English skills they have a brain box jam-packed with knowledge in own their native language. For all, we know Tan’s mother could have the answer to global warming in her back pocket but her inability to phrase it in English does not mean the pocket is empty.

Reading this article has opened my eyes to a whole new faction of discrimination. I was always aware of the social injustices that came with race and religion when it comes to immigration, but I seemed to have always underestimated how language played a major role in this said discrimination. People who assume they are of higher status due to their ability in certain languages tend to disregard those who don’t as people of lower status. Forgetting that language has little to no input in status and power in both societal and academic aspects.

Those who are better equipped in language tend to treat the others in a condescending manner as expressed by Tan when she referred to the majority’s behaviour towards her mother. “People… did not take her seriously”

As an audience, we were faced with an even bigger shock when it was revealed that her mother was not only treated this way in public but was also receiving this handling in places such as the hospital. As Tan’s mother was not only expecting results from this medical centre but results in which signified if she was to be diagnosed with a brain tumour. “She said they would not give her any information until next time”, the hospital had stated that they could not find the lost documents that Tan’s mothers’ life had depended on, also mentioning that she would have to make another trip to the doctors to reclaim them. Yet when Tan made the effort to speak to the hospital in what can be regarded as a higher quality of English, they “had assurance the CAT scan would be found.” Reading this I was absolutely appalled at the thought that a place of such significance would treat patients in such a manner. Hospitals should be the most cautious and tactful of places, as we put our lives in the hands of these individuals. So if they were to be discriminating against the simplest of things and put off Tan’s mothers’ CAT scan results for another time, how would they expect her to trust them at all? This is another display of the calamitous outcomes that occur through these discriminations.

Through this article, I was brought back to my first blog post topic, the importance of language. I had spoken of how language had played a major role in my life and how I would never make do without it. I had never been faced with the extent of how hard life would be without language, especially the dominant language of where I live. After becoming exposed to a second-hand experience of life without the ability of conversing in the dominant language, English, I feel as though I have an overall improved understanding of the statement I had made prior to reading this.