“Yes and No” by Amy Tan

Amy was born in the United States; and her parents were immigrants from Mainland China. She writes how it felt growing up in bilingual family. Her parents were talking to her on both Chinese and English language, she always responded on English but she knew Chinese language also. She is explaining in the chapter how she read an article in New York Time Magazine that stated “…there aren’t even words for yes and no” in the Chinese language. Then she explains why she doesn’t agree with that and explains the Sapir-Whorf thesis: “that one’s perception of the world and how one function in it depends a great deal on the language used”. A great and interesting example for this thesis is the example she gave about the Eskimos and their infinite words for snow, they actually have the ability to see differences in the snowflakes configurations, and the others who are not Eskimo have only one word. (28). Then she talks about the English speakers, who said that Chinese language is difficult, also the Chinese speakers have said the same thing to Amy about the English language that is very difficult (31). But as I learned from this course all languages are equally complex and equally capable of expressing any idea. Amy worries that the people are seeing the Chinese people from a partial perspective. Then in the last part of the chapter she agrees that there is no words for “yes” and “no”, but she gives a couple of examples of different questions and different answers, so the answer actually depends from the question. Like the example she gave in the chapter, if you ask a Chinese person if he ate, than the answer can be chrle (eaten already) or meiyou(have not).