Comment by volemo
10 hours ago
> You can, and should, speak Russian with a permanent broad smile
Funnily enough, I was told the exact same thing about English when I was learning it as a Russian native.
10 hours ago
> You can, and should, speak Russian with a permanent broad smile
Funnily enough, I was told the exact same thing about English when I was learning it as a Russian native.
I learned it on my own... always imagined it as "speaking without letting the heat out"
In contrast, see “Why Russians never smile”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27317859
Yeah, that's the point - you shouldn't really smile, it's about relaxing your mouth
On a tangent - I've moved abroad to work in a multinational corporation, and I noticed that similar cultures cluster together. I spend most of my time with other Eastern Europeans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-segregation
This is why forced mass immigration will never work and will only lead to disaster.
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Are we trying to make psychopaths? That’s sounds very unsettling for conversation.
In the context of a foreigner clumsily trying to speak your language, the smile might be interpreted differently.
Americans are regularly ribbed for smiling way too much during conversations with strangers. Apparently we can be rather unsettling lol