Reader el brought me a link that reminded me of what teaching English to Russian-speakers was like.
English sounds way too expressive and emotional to Russian-speakers who are notorious for their flat intonations and their inward-looking emotional range. I remember how my Mom always seethed whenever she heard my Dad speak English on the phone back in Ukraine.
“Why does he have to become this way? Nobody will take him seriously if he speaks like a clown!” she’d worry. I tried explaining that he had to sound “like a clown” to a Russian-speaker’s ear in order to be understood by an Anglo but she was not persuaded.
“You are trying to tell me that everybody in America does these weird things with their faces when they speak?” she’d ask. “That’s ridiculous.”
By the way, after sixteen years in Canada, my mother still doesn’t speak any but the most basic English.
When I started teaching English to Ukrainians, I had to tell them things like, “Imagine that you are a little kid. Open your mouth wide, make faces at me, make your voice do a sing-song. Try to be as goofy as you can.”
My students were adults and they didn’t appreciate these suggestions.
I also tried teaching my (first) husband to speak the language but every attempt ended with a fight.
“Why do you have to act so fake?” he’d ask. “You become this over-the-top, completely fake person whenever you speak English.”
Learning a language is easy. The very first thing you need to do is become a completely different person.
Clarissa's Blog 
Jesus, if Anglos are considered very expressive when they talk, what would the French be considered. 😉 Lets not even imagine Arab speakers, lol. 🙂
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No, Italians are the most expressive ones. And the Vietnamese.
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Arabic sounds very flat intonationally to a foreigner, by the way.
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Not the Arabs in my community you should watch them go at it during a good discussion. 🙂 I agree about the Italians but I have listened to many Vietnamese though.
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Arabs can speak very loudly and wave their hands a lot but the into nations are still flat. At least, that’s how I hear it.
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Well I would definitely trust your ear above mine. But I have the same experience as JT. To me, Arabic seems like it fluctuates all the time.
Actually, having grown up hearing both Russian and Ukrainian (though I can’t speak either), I always considered both languages to be highly expressive: lots of hand waving, facial expressions, vocal fluctuations etc etc. As I said, I trust your ear far more above mine, but I’ve always thought of Anglos as being relatively inexpressive…… especially Midwesterners. I think Midwesterners sound like they are flat-lining when they speak!
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The hardest thing to teach to a Russian-speaker who is learning English is that you need to inflect your sentences.
We even draw schemes, “Here is how you bring the intonation up to make a question.”
In Russian, you know a sentence is a question because of the word order. Or sometimes emphasis on certain words. The intonation remains exactly the same, however.
What’s funny is that people back in Ukraine are telling me I now speak Russian with an accent. When I press them on what it means, they always say “Intonation.” And it’s true, I now speak this much more inflected Russian that sounds foreign.
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Also, this is precisely why word order is so malleable in Russian and Ukrainian. You use it in lieu of intonational fluctuations.
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What about teaching Spanish to Russian or English speakers?
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I never taught Spanish to Russian-speakers, so I don’t know. But teaching Spanish to English-speakers involves detailed lectures on the philosophy of each language. My theory is that to be a fluent Spanish-speaker you need to learn to manage people’s emotions and work out extreme degrees of corteousness. Abandon brusqueness and directness if you are Anglo. This is fascinating stuff.
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I learned English w/o ever hearing anything like your approach, so taking it isn’t a must.
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A 13-year-old French girl once told me that sentences in English “sound like circles,” but that British speak in “rounder circles” than Americans.
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I have a similar experience with my own language and English. For instance, saying “I love you” or “You are so adorable/cute” to my kids is no big deal and I do it all the time. It would freak me out royally if either one of my parents ever told me they loved me. Also, my husband and I only ever say the “I love yous” to each other in English, as in our own language it’s really very weird-sounding, sharp, strong, and just never said. Same with all the boyfriends ever, I don’t think I ever said or heard “I love you” straight up in my native language, it was always couched or reworded or hinted. I come from a culture that is not very big on verbal expression of emotion. English allows for much more of it.
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