Soviet Union The Only Proper Way example essay topic

Language My language has mainly been influenced socially and politically. The society taught me the proper way to speak, when to speak, and to whom to speak. The politics taught me what views I should hold when I speak. Yet the influences are different through out the world as I have learned when I moved to United States, at the age of nine, from The Former Soviet Union. It has been a very unique experience to learn the social and political boundary differences of the two different nations. My first language experience was through my family and pre-school, as they both taught me the proper ways to say letters.

Later on they putt a heavy infuses on me to learn how to make proper sounds when saying words. I recall that one of the hardest sounds I had to learn was to roll my r's. I learned other unique sounds as well through out my younger years. I had to learn the proper way to speak in order to sound educated.

In The Former Soviet Union a person would be seen inferior if he or she could not speak properly. After pre-school I moved on to the first grade and was expected to learn political poems and other text. The poems that I learned had their own influence on my speech and its content. The nation was heavily influenced by political patriotism and there for so was the language. I remember as a kid my friends and I would always say that we swear on Lenin, an x - national hero, as people in United States say they cross their heart. I would always see adults seating down and arguing about politics and would always think why are the arguing so hard about it if they cant do anything about it.

Now I understand that they argued because it was patriotic and proper to care about the government so much. When I watched the television as a kid I would always see cartoons that would teach me the proper ways to communicate with others. But at many times when I would turn the television on I would see the president speaking on every channel. I never really understood his patriotic speeches to the nation. I was expected to be very respectful to all elders by waiting to speak to them after they were done speaking, and to never interrupt two adults while they are talking to each other.

And if I was very to address an adult the only proper way to do so was to make eye contact and speak formally. However, the greatest language rule of all was to never talk bad about the government, for it was considered very disrespectful and unpatriotic. Later on at the age of nine my family and I moved to The United States. This was a very difficult and confusing time for me.

My family did not know any English and therefore could not communicate effectively with others. People did not want to even attempt to try to understand what my parents would be trying to say with their broken English, that was very hard to see for me. Couple months after arriving in U.S. I went to a public school. At first it was very hard to associate with others for me, because I did not know English and did not know what to talk to them about.

After short time I started to slowly pick up on the language and was able communicate with some students that would give me their patients. After getting a better handle on the English language I realized that people in U.S. voiced their opinions on various topics very openly. At first I was very uneasy about voicing myself in such open ways, the last thing I would have wanted was to sound disrespectful. One of the hardest things was to know in what form to address my teachers. In Soviet Union the only proper way to address an adult was in a formal way, but in U.S. the teachers told me their first names.

I was not able to call any adult by their first name for a long time. Later on I learned that in order to be respectful students usually call their teachers by their last names with proper prefixes. It was much easier for me to communicate with teachers and other adults after learning that I can call them by their last name in order to be respectful. Although I was learning a new language I still only knew my original social moral of dialect. I learned the English language much faster than I did the accepted way of communication. The language was new and so were the social standards.

Many people did not speak proper English. It seemed that various types of people could speak slightly different type of English. People also voiced their political and general opinions very openly and radically. In Soviet Union people would be arrested if they were heard speaking in a negative way about the government, but in U.S. it was as if it was promoted to think in a divers way. I had to adapt to the new political acceptations and social standards of language and content. I later on learned that a person's class could be heard through the way they speak in a stereotypical way.

And a person's education level could also be seen in the same way by analyzing the content of their speech and the grammar. Of course those are very stereotypical ways to judge people, but it is the way that the class system works in U.S. Unlike in Soviet Union were people where there were two classes of either educated or they were not, in U.S. there are many levels of the class system. I have learned that it is helpful to be able to communicate with all types of people, there is no single best way to communicate. But when communicating through various types of reports it is very important to be able to use proper grammar, formatting, and sentence structures. That is the only one standard that everyone needs to know. Every person's ideas and feeling can be expressed on paper, yet the only way to really do that is to know the proper techniques.

Oral Communication is world wide in different molds, but communication by words on paper is a world standard. Therefore, the greatest language lesson that I have learned so far is the impotent's of knowing how to properly communicate my feelings and ideas on paper.