Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue"

One issue that grabbed my attention was the importance of a person's home language. From Tan’s article we get an insight through her personal life about the importance of one’s home language. She talks about how language has an effect in our lives. Amy Tan tells us how her home language had affected her life as she grew older; she believed that due to her home language spoken by her mom it would limit her possibilities in life, on the contrary to sociologists and linguists, Tan didn't believe it was the peers who so much affected her language skills but more the language that was spoken at home with the family and it played a large role in shaping the language of the child.

As a child that grew up in a mixed cultural and linguistic household, language was and still is a very key factor in my life. I constantly change my language depending on who I am talking to which helps me interpret different situations in different perspectives but for me my home language is the most important because it signifies intimacy and in a way comfort because it is something that I am fully in control of using. As Tan said in her article: “It has become our language of intimacy” which is something I can relate to tremendously. Both my parents aren't  fluent in the English language but it is still very good and understandable yet it required me to speak more Arabic and German at home which limited my English making it harder to communicate in a society that mainly spoke English. My parents focused more on teaching me my home language because it was my main source of communication, even with my other family members and I soon grew up to thank them and realize what this means. Being able to speak and know the importance of my home language helped me identify myself- I was more connected to my culture, to my family and to my surroundings. A massive influence to my home language was also my country.

“According to National Center for Educational Statistics, in 2007, about 10.8 million (or 20%) school-aged children in the U.S. spoke a language other than English at home, in the US.”  The schools and teachers know of the importance of the home language and therefore encourage their students to look deeper into it and see connections between their languages and, thus, to better understand how languages are structured and organized and so they ask them questions such as:
“How is the home language the same and how it is different from English?”

“Are there words in the home language that sound the same and mean the same thing in both languages?”

“Are there words in the home language and English that sound the same but mean different things?”

I find that it is important to teach young children to value their home language and not to forget it and keep using it. Like Tan says towards the end of her article is that language ability tests don’t reveal intent, passion, thought and imagery. A person’s home language and dialect shouldn't limit their perspective on them. Many people believe that when a person is too busy speaking and learning his home language and not as fluent in English it means they’re lazy and ignorant and thought to be a reflection to the quality of their intelligence which is really isn't and I believe that Amy Tan did a great job in portraying that in her article. 

Source: 

Genesee, Fred. "The Home Language: An English Language Learner's Most Valuable Resource." Colorin Colorado. N.p., 2012. Web. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.colorincolorado.org%2Farticle%2F50323%2F>.