Mother Tongue by Amy Tan - Vocabulary & Key Concepts

Flashcards covering key terms, entities, and conceptual definitions from Amy Tan's essay 'Mother Tongue'.

Amy Tan

A writer and non-scholar of English who explores the power of language and the different variations of English she grew up using.

The Joy Luck Club

The book written by Amy Tan about mothers, which she discusses during her speaking engagements.

Standard English

The formal English learned in school and books, characterized by carefully wrought grammatical phrases, nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, and conditional phrases.

Language of Intimacy

A specific variation of English used within a family or close relationship—such as between Amy Tan, her husband, and her mother—that relates to family talk.

Du Yusong

A political gangster in Shanghai who shared the same last name as Amy Tan's mother's family, became powerful and wealthy, and attended her mother's wedding to show respect.

Putong

The river east side local area mentioned in Tan's mother's story referring to where Du Yusong came from.

Mother Tongue

The spoken English of Amy Tan's mother, described by Tan as vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery, and foundational to how Tan made sense of the world.

Broken or Fractured English

Terms commonly used to describe non-standard English speech that Tan winces at because they suggest the speaker's language is damaged or lacking wholeness.

Limited English

A descriptive term for non-standard English that Tan criticizes because it often causes others to perceive the speaker's thoughts or perceptions as limited.

Empirical Evidence

Real-world observations—such as service workers in department stores, banks, and restaurants ignoring her mother—that led young Tan to mistakenly believe her mother's imperfect English reflected imperfect thoughts.

Benign Brain Tumor

The medical diagnosis revealed by a CAT scan that prompted Tan's mother to visit the hospital and insist on receiving her medical information.

Achievement Tests

Standardized tests on which Tan scored in the 60th to 70th percentile in English and 90th percentile or higher in math, leading educators to steer her toward math and science.

Fill-in-the-Blank Sentence Completion

A type of standardized test item using grammatical structures (like 'even though') to test semantic opposites, which Tan found overly restrictive and bland.

Word Analogies

Test questions requiring the identification of logical relationships between word pairs (e.g., 'sunset is to nightfall'), which Tan struggled with due to vivid associative imagery.

Nascent State

A phrase from an overly complex line ('That was my mental quandary in its nascent state') in the first draft of Tan's story before she simplified her writing style.

Internal Language

The imagined translation of Tan's mother's Chinese if she spoke perfect English, capturing her intent, passion, imagery, rhythms of speech, and nature of thoughts.