How does tan build a central idea of her story in the excerpt? tan describes her friends’ understanding of her mother to support the idea that nonstandard forms of english should only be used in the home. tan uses numerical data to support the idea that nonstandard forms of english are on the decline and being replaced by one standard form. tan tells a story about her mother’s life to support the idea that learning the language of a new country comes naturally to most people. tan discusses her mother’s english to support the idea that the language of one’s childhood is a person’s deepest, truest form of expression