In the "Mother Tongue" excerpt, Tan uses the word English more than 40 times. How does Tan's description of and relationship with the word English change over the course of the essay?

Tan begins her reflective essay by telling her readers about the different types of “Englishes”  

that she uses on various occasions. She describes the kind of English she uses while giving a

speech:

A speech filled with carefully wrought grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly  

seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, forms  

of standard English that I had learned in school and through books.

As the essay progresses, readers are told about the kind of English she was exposed to while

growing up—her mother’s broken English:

Du Yusong having business like fruit stand. Like off-the-street kind. . . . Now important  

person, very hard to inviting him. . . . He come to my wedding. I didn't see, I heard it. I  

gone to boy's side, they have YMCA dinner. Chinese age I was nineteen.

While growing up, Tan was embarrassed of her mother’s broken English: “I know this for a  

fact, because when I was growing up, my mother's "limited" English limited my perception of  

her. I was ashamed of her English.”

Thus, Tan discusses the English language throughout this excerpt to illustrate her complex  

relationship with her mother as well as with those who spoke English fluently.

many women had to remain at home while husbands found work.

explanation: