Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue Many people take the skill of writing for granted. For others it is an accomplishment that they can use as an advantage over people who have yet to complete the skill. Since the author, Amy Tan in Mother Tongue has the gift of being able to write very well she appreciates each and every aspect of writing and the different languages it may bring. You can be Chinese, French or of any other culture and still know the basics of writing or reading but how good you are of them is a different story. Tan, in the story Mother Tongue, learned to speak many englishes, as she called them, so that a variety of people could understand her. For instance, when it came to her mother she would have to speak in an incomplete English so her mother would be able to understand her. She referred to her mother’s ability to speak as “…broken or fractured English.” (Tan 173) Even though we may call that inappropriate English Tan calls it “Family Talk.” (Tan 172) That was the English she was raised on and refuses to forget. Tan looks back on the times when she would have to be her mother’s mouth for her because her mother would not get the same respect when she spoke improper. Although Tan’s mother’s English is complicated and improper, to Tan she believes it is “…perfectly clear and perfectly natural.” (Tan 173) Many of her friends are not able to understand her mother but she explains that they way her mother talks expresses things for her in a way that makes her see the world different. She has said that when she was younger she was actually embarrassed of the way her mother would speak. Her mother never seemed to speak in a complete thought and that would show the people she spoke to the quality of what she was saying. She has learned to appreciate the tone and structure her mother uses to now to speak and write because that is what has helped her gain so much knowledge in her own English. This same example can be used with many people who are fluent in...