Evidence Based
The article “Mother Tongue” has been written by Amy Tan and “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” has been written by Gloria Anzaldua. Both of these articles are focusing on the struggles associated with language on the basis of cultural differences. The main idea that we get from the story ‘Mother Tongue’ is that language is not only a way of communication but it also has a sociological value that tells us about the worth of an individual. In the second story ‘How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Anzaldua is talking about the struggles that Mexican people have to go through in an American society. It mainly deals with the idea that how the cultural differences can influence a person to speak one language rather than the other. On the basis of…show more content… “How would you feel if someone cut out your tongue?” (Anzaldua) She shared some of her personal life events in the article, which itself makes it strong. During her school life, she and other students belonging to Chicano descent were made to take two speech classes in order to change their accents. Moreover, the Chicano were forced by other students of the school to speak English as the language that these Chicanos used to speak is not correct. From this incident, we can see that how difficult it to adapt in some other culture. It shows that how our language and accent can make us feel inferior to others. Anzaldua also suffered a lot because of her language due to which she also felt unsure of whether her language would be understood by anyone or not. Also, in the second essay Tan clearly shows the effect that language has on our lives. She describes the difficulties a person have to face if he belongs to a bilingual home. “She used to have me call people on the phone to pretend I was she.” (Tan) This shows that in addition to the difficulties she had to face outside the home in terms of language, she also had the responsibility of turning his mother’s broken English into a clear proper English. There are several examples in the story which show that Amy’s mother was mostly ignored by others because of her way of speaking English. It can also be due to the fact that her English could not be understand by anyone. One such incident is the one where the author talked to her mother about the cost of furniture, and she replied “Not waste money that way” (Tan) From these examples we can see that how unfortunate it is to be stigmatized and ignored because of not being able to speak a specific
