Language of Intimacy

   Greetings readers and classmates, welcome to my second language and literature blog post discussing the importance of a person’s home language.

   During the class discussion, we discussed several topics on Amy Tan’s essay ‘Mother Tongue’ and the topic language of intimacy was discussed for a great amount of time. I decided to discuss this topic even further with this opinionated post and describe my views that I was not able to share during the discussion.

    As Amy writes her novel called ‘The Joy Luck Club’ she realizes the importance of her mother’s ‘broken’ English (language of intimacy) in her life. As you may have known, a home language is the type of language that you would use or speak with someone that you have a close relationship with, most of the time it’s family members. If I were to give a definition it’d be 

A language that is spoken amongst closely related group of people under the influence of one’s culture and personal experiences. 

Based on people’s experiences, a home language is usually a merge of 2 or 3 languages and it wouldn’t mean anything when spoken to other people outside the ‘home’ because in order to understand it, you need the previous experience that would make what you are  saying make sense. It is confusing but if you have a language of intimacy you’d understand. I have a language of intimacy, it is a merge of Indonesian, English and Malay, only spoken between my younger brother and myself.

    What happens if this language of intimacy is used in the outside the house? This is the case with Amy Tan’s mother and her ‘broken’ English. I’d put the blame on culture because as an immigrant, Amy’s mother was raised in a different culture and speaks a different language obviously. It certainly affects people’s perception of her and thus leads to her not being treated fairly. I’ve heard that Chinese people and their culture usually stick with them even though they are immigrants because it is very strong and widely known today as with Filipinos, they are able to adapt to other cultures easily due to the fact that their culture is not as strong when being compared to the Chinese people? (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xjhdSrgCPI)

   Anyways, what I am trying to say is that culture and language is very heavily linked. They have a negative relationship, the stronger the culture therefore the weaker the adaptability level.