Amy Tan’s argument in this piece seems to be that there is no superior version of English and that language is more about the message that one is trying to convey and less about speaking grammatically correct. She makes her argument by giving examples from her childhood and personal experiences of growing up in a bilingual home where she was the one who seemed to speak the clearest version of English. It was obvious from the accounts she was giving that English was not the first language spoken in her home. Tan is explaining how there are different ways to do things and say certain things and that there isn’t only one correct way.

The title Mother Tongue can relate to her piece because it might be referring to the simplicity of the piece and the ease with which her mother can read it.  The title relates to her argument and the reason she wrote this is because even though English might come naturally to her, she still speaks the way that her mother does occasionally, in a way its her ‘mother tongue.’ The target audience of this piece seems to be her mother in particular and also as a more general message to others who are dealing with similar types of different Englishes in their lives.  You can tell that her mother is her audience because at the end of the piece she feels a sort of satisfaction when her mother says “so easy to read.” Tan divides the Englishes she speaks into various categories which are the English she spoke to her mother in, the broken English her mother spoke to her in, the watered down version of Chinese into English, and the English she spoke around colleagues and friends.

English has always been my first language but with both of my parents speaking different languages, Russian and Hebrew, the English that I speak at home is a little different from the English I speak with friends or teachers. Growing up my parents spoke mainly English to me because that was the way that they communicated with each other since they didn’t really speak each others languages. But sometimes I’ll add in words that are in either Russian or Hebrew when speaking to my parents in English without even realizing it. I think when speaking to friends and teachers I might subconsciously be a little more thoughtful of what I’m saying or how I’m saying it. With close friends who speak either Russian or Hebrew I might speak to them in that language but I find myself mainly speaking English whether it be the mix of English and other languages I speak at home or what others might consider to be ‘proper’ English.