It's a Southern Thing..

In “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan she explains how she grew up in a home where her mother spoke “limited” English. She stated that most people couldn’t understand her mother at all when she talked sometimes to the point where they thought she was speaking in Chinese, even though Tan had no problem understanding her. It seemed very clear and natural to her. I can’t really relate to this story because I grew up in a home where everyone spoke just plain English. None of my immediate family is immigrants so everyone speaks in a very clear, understandable fashion. But I can say that my father’s side of the family speaks a completely different style of English than my mother’s side. My father’s family is a little more “country” than my mother’s so the words may vary. They may say things like “well I reckon,” or “you-ins,” “’mater” instead of tomato, or “’tater” rather than potato, “ain’t cha,” and other words or phrases similar to those. Now, by no means does my mother’s family speak perfect English with every sentence grammatically correct, but it’s nowhere near as "incorrect" as my father’s family. To an extent, I can relate to Amy Tan’s experience with her mother’s “broken” English because my family speaks two different styles but at least other people outside of my family can understand them.