4 You should know that my mother's expressive command of English doesn't reflect how much she actually understands. She reads 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 understand only 50 percent of what my mother says. Some say they understand 80 to 90 percent. Some say they 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 things, 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 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's perceptions of the "limited" English speaker.
6 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. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to 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, 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 had been rude to her. One time it was a call to her stockbroker in New York. She had cashed out her small stock portfolio 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 not 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.