After reading the essay, “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, our class learned a lot about why we speak the way we do. There are some pretty important factors that determine how we speak, such as where you have lived during your lifespan, where your parents have lived, you and your parent’s ethnicity, who you associate with, or whether you’re in a public or private environment. I have spent my entire life living in the Boston area, so I definitely have my own unique mother tongue. All over Massachusetts and New Hampshire there are many different versions of the Boston accent. Now that I am living in Puerto Rico, I try to tone down the Boston accent I have, because it’s already a little challenging for me to communicate sometimes. Occasionally there is a significant language barrier, so I go out of my way to make sure I pronounciate my “R’s” when I speak. People don’t need to hear about my “cah” instead of car, or about how we eat “suppah” instead of dinner, or even how we take out the “gahbidge” instead of garbage, to give a few examples. There are also some words that in the Boston area mean certain things, while other places in the country it means something totally different. In Boston, some people call tomato sauce “gravy”. We call the water fountain a bubbler. A cart at the grocery store is a carriage. The basement is called the cella. In my experience, the term non-Bostonians have the most trouble understanding is “wicked”. When I travel to other places and say something is “wicked awesome” people get confused. They say “how can something be awesome and evil at the same time?”. Dependent on many factors we all have our own mother tongue. The Boston area mother tongue is certainly unique, but all over the world people have their own accents and terms for everyday things. There is no such thing as “perfect English” or “perfect Spanish” because there is no consensus, we all speak the same language differently.