Vign06(20161226) My English Language Teacher (6 of 15)

1978-1997

He had his favorite song "This land is your land" and he always sang it when any guitar is happened to be around.

There were some topics in Soviet English that were omitted for some reason, maybe, to ensure the truely Soviet way of life :) , e.g. card suits. Nobody could ever know from the textbooks what does it mean "jack of diamonds" or "deuce of hearts". Maybe this happened in order to prevent gambling in future communist society :).

Anyway, some items were completely omitted, e.g. cards, dice, domino.
But words like 'pyatiletka' (five-year plan) and "kolkhoz" (collective farm)  did exist there. Could have been a surprize for some native speakers :).

My English language teacher time by time submitted us the whole set of slang words for: drug users, drunkards, extremal youth. This had been dangerous to do, but he always broke the common rules.

He often spoke English to militia officers, making them think he is, probably, the foreigner, the guest of our country, and they allowed him to do whatever he wanted to do (You can never find militia officer speaking any languages except Russian/Ukrainian, so they always considered any foreign speaking person to be some kind of magician or superman :).

To be the English-language teacher in technical (non-humanitarian) university in closed (no foreigners) city is the real challenge. Three big shipyards building military ships for Navy had been located in our city and that created a lot of restrictions.

But when first American students finally appeared in the university, they noted: "This American person speaks really good Russian!" :)

His name was Lev Yurievich B'ONUSHKO. God bless him. Let him rest in peace. After his death his wife and daughter left for Israel.

(c) Victor Sergeyev, 2016
Narrated by Serge Kaznady (Toronto)