Blog 34: CP Topic

The topic for my Common Place paper is cultural boundaries and how they affection people and communications. The subtle differences in cultures can provide moments of learning or embarrassment depending on the situation. Learning about other cultures allows us to be knowledgeable of acceptable and unacceptable actions between the two different worlds as well as show us how these actions can be perceived so differently. Many things are different between cultures such as holidays that are celebrated or the meaning of certain words; even words can have different meanings across cultural boundaries. I look forward to writing this paper because most people have at least one experience where they can relate to this topic. One example is if you are sitting in a room and two people are speaking to each other using a different language. You have no idea what they are saying and their language sounds like a bunch of strangely arranged syllables that only they can understand. Sometimes a person will assume that they are talking about them because he or she will look at the people holding the conversation strangely and they will look back then continuing talking. This can lead to feeling uncomfortable because the person assumes they are talking about him or herself. Truth is they are probably just puzzled why the person is staring and simply returning to their conversation. Next time you find yourself in a situation like this, just think about how interesting it is that a different language sounds like gibberish to you but the speakers clearly understand it.