Question

“mother tongue” by amy tan amy tan is an american author, best known for her novel the joy luck club (1989). she was born in oakland, california, to chinese parents who immigrated to america to escape the chinese civil war. i am not a scholar of english or literature. i cannot give you much more than personal opinions on the english language and its variations in this country or others. i am a writer. and by that definition, i am someone who has always loved language. i am fascinated by language in daily life. i spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language - the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth. language is the tool of my trade. and i use them all - all the englishes i grew up with. recently, i was made keenly aware of the different englishes i do use. i was giving a talk to a large group of people, the same talk i had already given to half a dozen other groups. the nature of the talk was about my writing, my life, and my book the joy luck club. the talk was going along well enough, until i remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. my mother was in the room. and i was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of english i have never used with her. i was saying things like “the intersection of memory upon imagination” and “there is an aspect of my fiction that relates to thus - and - thus” - a speech filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, all the forms of standard english that i had learned in school and through books, the forms of english i did not use at home with my mother. just last week, i was walking down the street with my mother, and i again found myself conscious of the english i was using, the english i do use with her. we were talking about the price of new and used furniture and i heard myself saying this: “not waste money that way.” my husband was with us as well, and he didn’t notice any switch in my english. and then i realized why. it’s because over the twenty years we’ve been together i’ve often used that same kind of english with him, and sometimes he even uses it with me. it has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of english that relates to family talk, the language i grew up with. 1. how is the english that tan used at her book talk (paragraph 3) different from the english she uses when speaking with her mother?

Explanation:

The English used at the book - talk was filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrases, nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, and other forms of standard English learned in school and through books. The English used with her mother was a different, more familiar and intimate form of English related to family talk, which was the English she grew up with.

Answer:

The English at the book - talk was standard English with complex grammar forms, while the English with her mother was a more familiar, intimate family - related English.