She seems angry about
the fact she is loosing her
mother tongue
'you could not use them both together '
this tells us she wants to be able to use both
yet, she struggles to as she is in a different
country
she shows the discomfort of
loosing your mother tongue
and having to use your
foreign tongue
'if you had two tongues in your mouth'
it makes the reader feel uncomfortable because you can
imagine having the two tongues in you mouth and how
difficult everything would feel
she talks morbidly about her mother tongue
'your mother tongue would rot, rot and die in your mouth'
this tells the reader that her mother tongue is dying
in her mouth, and by using the verb 'rot' it makes
the reader imagine of something decaying slowly in
your mouth and it would be unpleasant
during the second stanza of the poem she dreams in Gujarati
this shows the reader that she has found her mother tongue
this has a massive impact on the poem because the
majority of the readers may not understand Gujarati
which is how she feels about English, Its unfamiliar
she uses imagery of flowers in her final stanza
'it grows back, a stump of a shoot'
by using alliteration: 'stump of a shoot', it shows the reader that her
mother tongue is slowly growing like a tree
she uses repetition
'grows longer, grows moist, grows strong veins'
she uses repetition to let the reader know that her
mother tongue is growing back and is there and back
with her
she lets the reader know that the mother
tongue rules again
'it ties the other tongue in knots'
'it pushes the other tongue aside
this tells the reader that the mother tongue
is back and therefore she wants to keep
repeating it so everyone knows and see and
can feel happier
she feels triumphant
'it blossoms out of my mouth'
this makes the reader imagine a large flower
emerge out of her mouth slowly and that
would be her foreign tongue