Response to "Mother Tongue"

People all over the world face situation that had faced Amy Tan. And I'm not the exception.

I never spoke english at home, we use our national language. If english was my primary language and my family lived in english-speaking country, I assume that English I would have spoken at home had had a positive influence on me.

I lived in Moscow with my family. My russian became fluent, better than my parents. Sometimes when they were speaking to russian people, I was ashamed of them. At school we used jive talks and sometimes when I used it at home, my parents couldn't understand me. But few years later, I realized that speaking foreign language is not for speaking it like native speakers, but to be clear, so other people will understand you.

My mother is a poetess and a writer. I mentioned that my russian became better than hers. But I was wrong. She translated the novel "William the Conqueror" from russian to mongolian language. And it became best-seller. I realized that even if her pronunciation wasn't very good, her grammar and understanding the language, feeling its beauty was better than mine.
Now, I'm not ashamed of my parents, but proud of them.

When we came back to Mongolia, I transfered to Russian Embassy School in Ulaanbaatar. 80% of students were mongolians. First few months I was in a complicated situation, because I couldn't understand what they were talking. I felt uncomfortable among classmates. But soon, I made friends and they helped me to use mongolian jive talks. I noticed that slang was coming from the streets.

In my opinion, if your language is "broken" it is not the problem to be ashamed of. It is helping you to communicate with other people. People who are good, for example, in Spanish might have "broken" French. Also, we shouldn't use slang and jive talks everytime. People might see us as an uneducated and a rude person.