Amy Tan "Yes or No"

In her story “Yes or No,” Amy Tan talks about her experience with English and how many things change when a person grows up bilingual. In her story, she talks about an occasion where she came across in a New York Times Magazine article. In the article, there were many things said about Chinese people and their language. For example, she read that “Chinese people are so discreet and modest, that there aren’t even words for yes or no” (26). They are very polite and indirect people and that is why when they come here to America, they are obligated to do everything they are told to do because they just can’t simply say no. I believe they do all of this out of courtesy.

Also, aside from this article, Tan also talks about her mothers experience to language. Tan’s story is very similar to my “Relationship to Language” story in many ways. The reason why is because in my story I talk about how hard it was for my mother to speak English when she first came to this country and even now, because her brain is just not capable of learning the language. As well as Tan’s mother, my mother has a very hard time distinguishing the difference between plural and singular words in English. She has a very hard time with her pronunciation and she just gets frustrated to the point where she just gives up. In any event, I believe this is the part I found most interesting in the story. The fact that both Tan and I could make a connection with our mothers.

Another part I found interesting in the story, was when Tan said that “English speakers point out that Chinese is extremely difficult because it relies on variations in tone barely discernible to the human ear” (31). The reason why I found this part so interesting was because I believe this is the same way my mother feels about learning the English language. She believes it’s just extremely too hard for her to learn the different variations of tone, sound and articulations.