Formality/informality 101

What is up everyone? vs Good afternoon Internet users, How are you today ?,

Properly speaking to adults or anyone is a matter of respect and to show that young students are also capable of acting in a mature manner.Sadly, I have been exposed to conversations informally spoken during my internship, but I have also been present during more formal interactions where people spoke in a subjective way.In the following paragraphs, I will be explaining both cases and the remarks that I made from this.

Informality at its peak

One day at my internship, I was stationed at my usual desk and I noticed that a co-worker of my host was sitting at her desk.Her name was Yibing and it was going to be the second time that we were going to communicate. At the beginning, I noticed that she spoke to me in a very friendly way by saying " Oh my god I've always wanted to learn Spanish it is crazy how I want to learn it!"because I mentioned that I was a native Spanish speaker. I told myself that this was not a very formal way to speak to a 17 year old college student and it turns out that she thought that I was actually 20 years old.It seemed very unlikely from my perspective.As soon as I revealed my real age to her, she then started to speak in a formal way. This made me realize how adults can speak as formal as a prime minister, but are able to speak like teenage youngsters when they are surrounded of people their age.

Formal like the Queen

Asides of the informality, there have been situations where formality was key to accomplish a good conversation. One example is when Michael Cohen entered the communication's room.He is the Head of Communications,therefore I had to address him in a respectful and mature fashion.As a college student, I stood up, walked towards him and shook his hand by saying " Good afternoon sir, how are you doing this afternoon ?" he then said "Hello Saul , I am fine thank you and yourself ?" I then thought for a second and answered " I am doing well, thank you for asking". He then replied :"That is good to know, now tell me how are you feeling about this internship ?" I explained that I felt very comfortable in this important educational establishment and that it felt very promising for my English improvements. After this conversation, I had to calm my mind because I gave it a lot of effort to make sure that I was not using informal or inappropriate vocabulary.By greeting the other co-workers in the same way each time I entered the office, it allowed to feel comfortable speaking in such a way and to also develop certain word reflexes to say while interacting with a formal person.

concluding remark

Even if there was informality at times, I felt that practicing formality is a good quality in life and this will give me an edge while talking to people.

As usual,

Until next time,

-Saul