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Whole Languages

What is language all about? Its first purpose certainly is to communicate. Even animals have their own languages, which were built through evolution and are necessary for them to survive. However, for us human beings, language is not only about surviving or being able to understand each other. It is not just about communication. There are many other concerns involved, such as identity, power, distance and status. In her essay Mother Tongue, Amy Tan writes about the importance of language in her life, telling us how interesting – and difficult – it is to have two different languages. Amy Tan is an American-Chinese writer, but, in fact, the two languages she uses are not English and Chinese or Chinese and any other language, but two different kinds of English: the Standard English and the one she calls – although hesitantly – “broken”.

She has only recently realized that these two different kinds of language were a part of her life and coexisted, even though not with the same interlocutors and with the same intentions. Which means, she almost unconsciously chooses one, depending on the situation. The first time her mother watched one of her speeches, she became aware of the fact that she was using a very different language than the one she had always used at home. As a writer, of course she uses the Standard English in her literature and in her lectures as well as in her daily work. But it made her feel uncomfortable to know that her mother would certainly notice that. She was using “wrought grammatical phrases” and “normalized forms” which she learned in school and through books. It was her intellectual English, the status English, the not-always-understood English. The same one that many times before had limited her imagination at school as in fill-in-the-blank sentence completions or exercises with strange non-sense analogies. Yet, it’s the one that made her famous.

Her “broken English”, on the other hand, was learned at home, with her Chinese family. It’s filled with errors. It lacks grammatical accuracy. But does it really matter? It is what, in a way, limited her possibilities in an American school, especially because of other people’s expectations of a Chinese child. But it is also what made her the imaginative and passionate writer that she is today. For Tan, her mother’s language is absolutely clear, direct and vivid. So she uses it as it is her “mother tongue”. It’s not supposed to show her writer skills. It’s not used to show off anything. It’s her language of intimacy, the one she uses with her husband, with her family. It’s natural, complete and most importantly, absolutely understood by her interlocutors.

However, her mother’s broken English is less understood by people around her. It is not Chinese and yet, not Standard English. It’s something in between. Does it have to be fixed, though? Does any language need to be fixed? To me, that’s something that should never be said. It’s an arrogant mistake. Every language we still have today is based on culture blends. Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Romanian come from a fusion of Latin with other native languages. English started as a blend of Germanic and Celtic languages. Are any of them broken? Not to mention where Latin and the Germanic languages came from. If we want to write or speak properly in any language, we should. Studying languages and making literature may be necessary and enriching. What we should not do is to say what is supposed to be used and what is broken, because that may break a lot more than a language. It may break a country.

*Texto escrito para oficina de Creative Writing em NYC (2011).

NY. The city where time is music.