Compare And Contrast: Adapt To An Unknown Culture And Tradition - Essay Example

Compare And Contrast: Adapt To An Unknown Culture And Tradition Everyone does not have the privilege of residing and growing up in the countries of their native origin. Humans have been compelled to seek their survival possibilities in foreign countries due to various reasons. However, the process of migration is fraught with challenges. When people of a particular origin migrate to another country to settle down permanently, they encounter difficulties in adapting them to the language and culture of the new country. This paper compares and contrasts the accounts of two persons whose families had migrated to the USA in their childhood. Their writings reveal their trials and tribulations in trying to adapt to an unknown culture and tradition and developing intimacy with a language which had hitherto been unexplored by their faculties. “Aria” is an autobiographical account by Richard Rodriguez. As a young Spanish boy, who had migrated to USA with his family, he faced trouble learning the new English language at school. The essay describes his trials and tribulations in this context. Initially, Rodriguez was shy and timid in his new school and found the mastering of the English language to be an arduous task. However, with adequate support from his teachers, he managed to learn English. Interestingly, this development generates conflicting feelings in Rodriguez. On one hand, knowing English makes him feel like a citizen of the USA while on the other he is overcome by a sense of sadness at being detached from the language and culture of his native country (Rodriguez, 30). Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” describes the author’s observations about the English language. Tan was a Chinese by origin whose parents had migrated to America. Though, she was exposed to broken English at home (spoken by her mother), the author had undergone rigorous training in the language in her school. Academically, Tan’s school found her to be more inclined towards science subjects rather than the arts group. Though, she was interested in pursuing English, her teachers encouraged her to enroll in the pre-Medical course in college. Rebellious as she was, Tan left the course and instead completed her Major in English by the first year in college. She began writing non-fiction articles and took to writing English fiction after 1985. She has expressed her willingness to learn this official language and even explains that the orientation in one’s family matters a lot in training one in terms of language. Her mother’s poor English has affected her childhood (Tan 514-515). Richard Rodriguez being Spanish and Amy Tan, Chinese were both new to the English language at their respective schools. In the initial stages, both of them encountered difficulties in learning English. For Rodriguez, it was more of an attitude problem: he was averse to learning English as he considered it to be a public language of the outside world. English was not a personal language which he could use to converse with his family members at home (since they spoke in Spanish). Rodriguez emphasizes upon application of language to create a gap between public and private life. Owing to his Mexican birth he feels a gap in the use of native language, that is, Spanish, and English which was supposed to be the “public language”. As he could not foresee any benefits of learning this “public language”, he displayed his uncooperative attitude in school as well. He chose to remain silent and unresponsive when he was asked to speak aloud in English in his class. Amy Tan’s predicament with English was of a different nature. Unlike Rodriguez, she was quite receptive towards learning the new language. Her scores in the English achievement tests were fair, being in the sixtieth and seventieth percentile. However, she did face some difficulties in English grammar (Tan, 517). He was different from his English speaking mates in school. Once she was unable to choose the appropriate pair of semantic opposite words to complete a sentence. At another instance, when she had to select a pair of analogical words similar to given example, she was confused by the relation of the given pair of words. Gradually with practice, he was comfortable in use of English as a medium of expression. However as he introduced this language in his domestic setting, there was a growing distance between himself and his siblings and this is one of the factors responsible for his deviation from childhood times. Though Rodriguez and Tan were not much familiar with English (since none of them was from English speaking background or family), their attitude towards learning the new language was different. Rodriguez thought that English learning was a laborious task, which did not cooperate with his teachers initially in trying to master the language. He admits in his essay that he would have preferred his teachers to have conversed in Spanish with him (Rodriguez, 30). In contrast, Tan had no such bias towards English and undertook thorough training in the language at her school. Though she admits to have had some problems in English grammar like semantic opposite terms, analogies etc., she gradually developed a fondness for the subject. Rodriguez can be said to have possessed a mental block towards the learning of English, which fortunately was not the case with Tan. However Rodriguez later understood that it was a right as well as obligation to adapt to English language. He understood that speaking only Spanish might postpone children’s entry into public life (Rodriguez, 30). With sustained efforts, both Rodriguez and Tan were able to learn the English language. However, the reaction of the two authors after this acquiring the skill was quite contrasting. When Rodriguez gains a familiarity English and gradually finds his family members also using the language frequently, he admits to being overcome with a strange sense of grief. Till this time, Spanish had been the family’s private language in expressing their thoughts to another one. As they grew intimate to English, Rodriguez felt as if he was being separated from his dear language and his native culture. It was as if he was being made to pay an expense for gaining mastery over the foreign tongue. On the other hand, Amy Tan does not exhibit any such sentiments when she finally manages to complete her Major in English in college. She explains it by saying that unlike Mathematics where there is only one right answer, English tests were kind of a “judgment call” (Tan, 517). Her account only exhibits positive feelings in this regard. One possible explanation for the different reactions of the two authors could be that Tan was not as familiar to her native language Chinese as Rodriguez was to Spanish. While Rodriguez’s account proves that his entire family were used to conversing in Spanish, Tan’s writings reveal that only her mother was conversant in their native tongue (Tan, 515). It was mandatory for all school-going children to learn English, and both the authors encountered considerable difficulties in trying to learn the language which was new to them. Though the background of their situation was quite similar, their attitudes, approaches, efforts and finally their reactions in gaining mastery over English were quite different as revealed by their respective accounts. In conclusion one may say that when persons hailing from different backgrounds, migrate to a new location, they are faced with considerable problems in trying to adapt themselves to the culture, language, customs and traditions of that place. This fact is clearly recognizable in the writings of Richard Rodriguez and Amy Tan. The difficulties that they had faced in trying to learn the English language, their fears and apprehensions all bear testimony to the fact that adapting to a different tradition requires a considerable effort. Finally they both realize sooner or later that learning the public language is extremely important. Probably, the authors were unconsciously aided by the fact that both of them were in their formative years (Tan, 514). References 1. Rodriguez, R. (1980), Aria: a memoir of a bilingual childhood, Education 2. Tan, A. (1990), “Mother Tongue”, In Williford, L. and M. Martone, Touchstone anthology of contemporary creative nonfiction, Simon and Schuster Read More