Friday, September 12, 2014

Blog Post #2

Class Discusssion : Mother Tongue Essay by Amy Tan

There were many good points in class discussion, but I would like to talk about 'the importance of home language' in this blog. Regarding to the story that Amy Tan's mother had mixed her dialect with English. It was defined as "broken English" resulting that she sometimes was ignored by people in community. Although if we were ignored when accidently mixing our dialect with English, how important of home language is? We know that most of the countries in our world have their own dialect, and having English as second official language. As an international student, I have my dialect that I use when speaking with my family, and English that I use at school. I can say that my dialect is very important because it was initially how I communicate with people. I used my dialect to gather new knowlegdes before I knew English. Dialect can define my identity and remind me who I am showing the value of my culture and history. When native language is not maintained by the speakers themself, links between family, community members can be lost. Heritage culture and long aged history of native speakers will also be lost if the speakers do not maintain their foundation. It is the connection between international native speakers and native speaker within country. We mostly think using our dialect because we will get more understanding in complicated topic. I can say that dialect lives in our soul expressing through our emotion. I know depth meaning of specific words in my dialect that I want to talk expressing to other people. Meanwhile, if I want to talk in same topic in English, i will absolutely not be able to express because in some specific word has its root, meaning in culture and emotion that can express through native speaker only. It is how we use language that touches our deep emotion when expressing sensitive story. Dialect is how I used to study english through. It is the way that non-native English speakers use to get better understanding in English because we did not cultivate English when we were at young age. By using dialect to learning English, we will understand English easier because some dialect structure and words is familiar to English. Some skill in dialect can be transferred to English or other languages. We will get more intellectual consequences in complicate topic when using dialect. Not only academic opportunity we get, but also more opportunities in international community. Most of employments are looking for employee who is able to speak more than one language. It is the way company contact and make relation overseas through employee. Knowing more than one language is a door to various alternative choices in jobs. At the same time, the perspective view for people that speak more than one language will be very wide because they will be able to gain information from many cultures, traditions and notions through language which they can share in community using home language. Hence, home language or dialect is very important to maintain because it is the way we were raised. It is the part of our culture, way of knowing our history and root. Home language is also a door to worldwide connection, also local community. It was the first thing that everyone in every cultures used to communicate, share ideas and absorb their beautiful culture. 

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