quietness

I know what you're thinking, and the answer is yes: I picked today's topic based solely on the fact that it ends with the suffix -ness.  But can you blame me?  I had three in a row going, and those were all honest picks.  Let's just hope this post doesn't turn out to be the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to my proverbial Indiana Jones trilogy.  Methinks it will, but who knows.

 Will he ruin this post, too?

One thing you might notice if you travel to Russia is that Russians are very quiet.  Well, if you can hear the silence over the sound of your own voice, you loud-talking American boor!  Sorry, that got personal.  Anyway, when I mean quiet, I don't mean that Russians don't talk.  They do, just quietly; the country is populated by a veritable army of Seinfeldian low-talkers.  This is in stark contrast to Americans.  If you haven't been abroad, you might not realize that Americans are generally very loud people.  Not that we just go around shouting all the time, but the definition of an average "inside voice" is demonstrably louder in the U.S. than it is in, say, Russia.

So why the difference?  Heck if I know.  Part of it may be due to differing ideas on personal space.  Russians will generally sit or stand much closer to each other than Americans when talking; it's not rare to see two people on the street having a conversation about a foot from each other.  If you're that close to someone, naturally you don't need to speak as loudly.  It's also interesting to see how loudness has become somewhat associated with English.  Many of my Russian students and friends speak louder in English than they do in Russian.  I've noticed this with other international students as well.  Conversely, I speak more quietly in Russian than I do in English.  So if you travel to Russia, turn it down a few clicks.  Whatever you do, just don't put it up to eleven.

Okay, so this post wasn't great.  I blame Shia LaBeouf.