的原文及翻译

1、Mother Tongue (母语) by Amy TanMother Tongue (母语)Amy Tan 1 I am a writer. And by that definition, I am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of languagethe way it can evoke an emotion, a visual im

2、age, a complex idea, or a simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade. And I use them allall the Englishes I grew up with.  2 Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use. I was giving a talk to a large group of people, the same talk I had already given to half

3、a dozen other groups. The nature of the talk was about my writing, my life, and my book, The Joy Luck Club. The talk was going along well enough until I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me

4、 give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with hera speech filled with carefully constructed grammatical phrases, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses, conditional phrases, all the forms of standard English that I had learned in sc

5、hool and through books, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother.3 Just last week, I was walking down the street with my mother, and I again found myself conscious of the English I was using, the English I do use with her. We were talking about the price of new and used furniture an

6、d I heard myself saying this: "Not waste money that way." My husband was with us as well, and he didn't notice any switch in my English. And then I realized why. It's because over the twenty years that we have been together I've often used the same kind of English with him, and

7、 sometimes he even uses it with me. It has become our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family talk, the language I grew up with. 4 You should know that my mother's expressive command of English doesn't reflect how much she actually understandsN. She read

8、s financial reports, listens to Wall Street Week (a TV financial news program), converses daily with her stockbroker, and reads many types of books with ease. Yet some of my friends tell me they only understand 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say th

9、ey understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother's English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It's my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it, is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the way I saw th

10、ings, expressed things, made sense of the world. 5 Lately, I've been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks. Like others, I have described it to other people as "broken" English. But I shrink with pain when I say that. It always bothered me that I can think of

11、 no way to describe it other than "broken", as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked certain wholeness and soundness. I've heard other terms used, "limited English", for example. But they seem just as bad, as if everything is limited, including people'

12、;s perceptions of the "limited" English speaker.  6 I know this for a factN, because when I was growing up, my mother's "limited" English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to

13、 say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect. And I had plenty of empirical evidence to support me: the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her,

14、 or even acted as if they did not hear her. 7 My mother has long realized the limitations of her English as well. When I was fifteen, she used to ask me to call people on the phone to pretend I was she. In this guise, I was forced to ask for information or even complain and yell at people who h

15、ad been rude to her. One time it was a call to her stockbroker in New York. She had cashed out her small stock portfolioN and it just so happened we were going to go to New York the next week, our very first trip outside California. I had to get on the phone and say in an adolescent voice that was n

16、ot very convincing, "This is Mrs. Tan." 8 And my mother was standing in the back whispering, "Why he don't send me check, already two weeks late. So mad he lie to me, losing me money." 9 And then I said in perfect English, "Yes, I'm getting rather concerned

17、. You had agreed to send the check two weeks ago, but it hasn't arrived." 10 Then she began to talk more loudly, "what he want, I come to New York tell him front of his boss, you cheating me?" And I was trying to calm her down, make her be quiet, while telling the stockbroker

18、, "I can't tolerate any more excuses. If I don't receive the check immediately, I am going to speak to your manager when I'm in New York next week." 11 Why were there not more Asian Americans representedN in American literature? Why are there few Asian Americans enrolled i

19、n creative writing programs? Why do so many Chinese students go into engineering? Well, these are broad sociological questions I can't begin to answer. But I have noticed in surveys that Asian students, as a whole, always do significantly better on math achievement tests than in English. And thi

20、s makes me think that there are other Asian-American students whose English spoken in the home might also be described as "broken" or "limited". And perhaps they also have teachers who are steering them away from writing and into math and science, which is what happened to me. Fo

21、rtunately, I happen to be rebellious in nature and enjoy the challenge of disproving assumptions made about meN. I became an English major my first year in college, after being enrolled as a pre-med. (1079 words) 我是个作家。 顾名思义，我是那种一直喜爱语言的人。 我对日常生活中的语言着迷。 我用大量的时间来思考语言的力量它是如何唤起情感、描绘视

22、觉图像、阐述复杂的观点或者展示简单的事实的。 语言是我的谋生工具。 我使用所有的英语在我成长过程中接触过的各种英语。 最近，（有件事）使我强烈地意识到我确实在使用各种各样的英语。 当时，我正在给一大群人演说，该演说我已给其他听众作过六次。 演说的中心内容是关于我的创作、我的生活、以及我的书喜福会。 演说进行得很顺利，直到我想起了这次演说与以往的演说有一个极大的不同，这使得整个演说听起来不对劲。 我母亲在演说厅里。 这也许是她第一次听我长篇大论，用的是我从未在她面前用过的那种英语 演讲中满是精心构造的、合乎

23、语法的词组，大量名词化结构，过去完成时，条件短语（这些我似乎是突然发现的）。 所有这些我在学校和书本中学到的标准语言结构，都不是我在家里和母亲交谈时使用的英语形式。 就在上个星期，我和我母亲一起走在街上，我发现自己又一次注意到了我所用的英语，也就是我和母亲交谈时所说的英语。 我们当时正在谈论新旧家具的价格，我听见自己在说：“不那样浪费钱。（Not waste money that way.）” 我丈夫也和我们在一起，他并没有注意到我英语的变化。 随即我就想到了这是为什么。 这是因为在我们朝夕相处的20年里，我经常在他面前说这种英语，有

24、时候甚至他也用这种英语和我交谈。 这已经成了我们的私人语言，一种只和家人交谈时使用的特殊英语，一种伴随我成长的语言。 要知道，我母亲的英语表达能力并不能反映她实际上对英语的理解能力。 她看财务报告，听“华尔街周”（一个有关金融新闻的电视节目），每天和她的股票经纪人谈话，而且能轻松地阅读多种书籍。 可是我有些朋友跟我说他们只能听懂我母亲50%的话。 有些说他们能懂80%到90%。 有些说他们一点儿也听不懂，就好像她讲的是纯粹的中文。 但是对我而言，我母亲的英语是再清楚、再自然不过的了。 这是我的母语。 在我

25、听来，她的语言生动、直接，富有洞察力和意象。就是这样的语言帮助我形成了我看问题、表达思想、认识世界的方式。 最近，我对于我母亲说的那种英语思考得更多了。 跟其他人一样，在他人面前，我一直把它称作“蹩脚”英语。 可是每当我这么说的时候就会因痛苦而畏缩。 让我一直不安的是，除了用“蹩脚”一词，我想不出别的方式来形容它，就好像母亲说的英语有缺陷，需要修补，就好像它缺乏某种整体性和完整性。 我听说过其他的说法，例如，“有限的英语”。 但是这样说听起来也一样不合适，就好像什么都是有限的，就连人们对于说“有限的英语”的人的认识也是有限的。 我知道事情的确是这样，因为在我成长的过程中，我母亲“有限的”英语限制了我对她的了解。 我曾为她说的英语而羞愧。 我曾以为她的英语反映了她要说的话的质量。 也就是说，因为她表达得不够完善，她的思想也不够完善。 而且我有很多实证来支持我的观点： 百货公司、银行和饭店里的