Don't Be Cringe

By the nature of my work, I have to do a lot of communicating with foreign developers. And unfortunately, every time a new developer from Russia shows up on the team, I have to listen to a chorus of “Oh no, another crazy Russki is here.”

But whatever they say, everybody understands perfectly well that Russian programmers are some of the most sought-after on the market. So foreign colleagues just put up with the Crazy Russians. What’s more, over the past 10 years I’ve watched teams become more and more mixed. Belgians, French, Germans, Australians have all gradually flowed into the mix.

Still, I think the situation doesn’t have to be more complicated than it needs to be. Below the cut you’ll find advice and personal experience on how to avoid awkward situations and make your life easier when working remotely.

Sort Out the Accents

Obviously, you don’t need to know the difference between “that” and “zat.” But that’s far from the only thing that can go wrong in English. Plenty has been written online about the subtleties of pronouncing certain words. And you have to keep an eye on this stuff. What’s more, you have to keep an eye on it specifically in the region where you work. In 10 years in the US, I never heard the words lift or autumn once. We all understand perfectly that they mean “elevator” and “fall.” But for an American it’s grating — those things have always been called Elevator and Fall.

But the fun is just getting started. You have Brooklyn, New York, Spanglish, Florida and a whole bunch of other local flavors. Naturally, the British may show up to the party with their [tomato’] instead of the American [tomae’to]. Or you might run into Australians who say G’day, mate! instead of Hello. Canadians are recognizable by their constant eh at the end of every question. And if you’ve ever talked to Italians, you’ve definitely run into a “Porko dia!”

(Examples of accents)

Be that as it may, I’ve yet to meet a single American who can pronounce “Worcestershire sauce.” (Worchester? Worshershire? Worchestaer? Voshesheshair? Anyway, can you pass me that Wor… something-or-other sauce?)

Wherever you are, understand that cultures are different, and despite the fact that this is called “English,” it actually contains an unbelievable number of dialects. You’ll just have to get used to it and learn the specific dialect your team speaks.

Install a Dictionary

As soon as possible, get rid of the habit of using English-Russian or Russian-English dictionaries. They’re a threat to your brain and your ability to communicate. Switch to a good English dictionary as soon as you can. Even if it has to be a children’s dictionary at first. Longman is the entry-level grade of English dictionaries. Drop by their site, look around, and make sure you can understand a word’s definition in English.

After Longman, you can level up and try Merriam-Webster, though I don’t have much respect for it. It’s too abridged for a real dictionary and too complicated for a school one.

My all-time favorite dictionary is the New Oxford American. When you can read an entry in it without burying yourself in five thousand other entries to figure out what’s written there — you’re doing great.

Sometimes duty calls and I open Random House Webster’s Dictionary. It’s not even online, you have to buy it. This monster of a dictionary has everything in it. Including all 44 definitions of the word set.

Why do you need all this? Because different words that are synonyms or homonyms in Russian aren’t necessarily so in English. And if you’ve figured out what “ride” means by looking it up in an English-Russian dictionary, that doesn’t mean you can say: “Can I buy a ride from you?”

All the dictionaries above can be downloaded as phone apps. What’s more, the dictionary built into Google is very good, so you can always just google “define set.”

If you run into an English word you don’t know, don’t be lazy and don’t read just the one definition you need — read all of them and understand what else this word is used for. (Which is also why you shouldn’t rely on voice assistants. They pick one — not always the right — definition for a word.)

Remember: if two words are synonyms in Russian, that doesn’t mean they’re synonyms in English. And vice versa.

Idioms

Idioms and turns of phrase you’ll have to learn on the spot. For example, if you walk into a store in Los Angeles, you’re required to perform the following exchange:

“Hi! How are you doing?” “I’m fine, thanks! And you?” “I’m doing fine, thanks for asking.”

This is a turn of phrase called “Greeting.” Under no circumstances are you allowed to alter it. And may all the gods of Olympus help you if you actually answer the question “How are you doing?” Don’t do it under any circumstances! If you fail to perform exactly this exchange — you’ll be considered an unpleasant person.

But if you try to perform this same exchange in New York, you might catch one in the face.

“Let’s go get some coffee.” That means let’s go acquire some coffee. You don’t say “Let’s go drink some coffee.” For reasons known only to aliens, we get coffee, we don’t drink it.

Again, all of this is local color, and you’ll have to get used to whatever the team you work with does. Good dictionaries will give you descriptions of these idioms.

And of course, you need to keep a careful eye on TikToks, social media, and Urban Dictionary. Who knew somebody might invite you to come buy a couple of glizzies.

A long, long time ago, maybe ten years back, I was asked to translate a text from English to Russian. I sat on “I feel like Chinese” for a solid hour. I feel like a Chinese person. What is he on about? An hour later I finally got there and figured out it meant “I want Chinese food.” There’s no working that out without a dictionary.

When you hear something that doesn’t follow the rules of grammar, or something that just sounds weird — always check. You can step on a hidden mine. The first time someone said to me:

“Do you want to vacuum the floor?”

I stupidly answered, “No, why should I?”

Who knew that in LA-speak, “Do you want to…” is a direct order to do something?

Punctuation

This is another thing some people simply forget to “relearn” when learning English. We sit down and learn grammar and new words, but we don’t have the time to dig into punctuation.

Long ago I was sitting and reading a Russian book when a Brit came up to me. He looked at the following text:

— И я тоже, не хочу. — А почему? — Да, надоело мне!

And asked, “What are those little dashes?” Yes — direct speech in dialogue isn’t set off with dashes the way it is in Russian. It’s written in quotation marks.

Book titles are written like this: Every Word with a Capital Letter, and on top of that, by all the rules, they should be set in italics. As, by the way, are the names of ships. So if you decide to take a cruise, don’t think they’re putting some special emphasis on the ship’s name. That’s just how you’re supposed to write it.

The names of languages are capitalized. So it’s English and Russian, not english and russian.

A huge number of people outside the US hate the habit of writing the month first. Yes — even Americans themselves aren’t always thrilled. To understand why this happens, you just need to say a date out loud in full:

February fourteenth, nineteen eighty six.

A bit non-Russian, but we’re not learning Russian. In English, that’s the correct way to say it. Which is exactly why their month name comes first. And if it’s inconvenient for us programmers — that’s our problem. Although yeah, even Americans now hate this system, because everyone’s fed up with it, just like they’re fed up with the non-metric system. But be that as it may, when you’re at the DMV, remember — filling out paperwork is its own ordeal.

So if you didn’t study punctuation in school or in some course, I recommend finding a good book on grammar and punctuation.

Speaking of the DMV

What in Russia we call GIBDD, in the US is called the DMV — Department of Motor Vehicles. And you’ll have to go there one way or another. IDs are issued there and nowhere else. Doesn’t matter whether you’re going to drive or not, but you can’t function without an ID. It’s like the Russian Gosuslugi portal. Anything that has to do with official business from the state — DMV.

Another thing you’ll have to get used to is that Pharmacy — the drugstore — is what we’d call an Auchan or Pyaterochka back home. Once when I mentioned that I needed to buy some food and basic essentials, I was a little stunned that the first place they sent me was the pharmacy. I got used to it eventually.

So when somebody says they’re going to name-of-place in order to do something that’s clearly not what that place is for — ask.

Jokes

The simplest way to spot a Russian in America is to ask them to tell a joke.

That’s it, caught red-handed. Never try to tell Russian jokes to Americans. They won’t get them.

One of my favorite stunts is to sit a Russian and an American down together. And I say, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m about to tell you both a joke — the Russian is going to laugh his head off, and the American won’t understand a thing. Alright, let’s go.

Aside. Originally there was supposed to be a joke here about a Russian sergeant in the army. But the catch is, the editor said it was completely incomprehensible. I sent it to my friends, and they said the same — the joke is incomprehensible. Fine, that just confirms my point. While I was hunting for a new joke, @dlinyj helped me out with a wonderful story that captures the essence of the matter perfectly. The story follows. The sergeant joke went under the cut.

(The sergeant joke)

About five years ago, in the wonderful city of Belgrade, in Serbia. We used to go to a Russian-Serbian club where Serbs studied Russian. And there I met one remarkable young woman who at first seemed to me like a Russian. But she turned out to be Serbian — she’d lived in Russia and had learned Russian by singing in a choir. She spoke Russian perfectly (again, I genuinely thought she was a native speaker).

One evening, after the restaurant, our strange little party went out for a walk. Me, a Russian girl, and this Serbian woman. We were switching between Serbian and Russian. And I decided to test how well this woman, who knew Russian so well, would understand Russian jokes. I tell her the following one:

“Stierlitz fell out of a fifth-floor window and only by some miracle managed to catch a third-floor cornice. The next day the miracle swelled up and made it hard to walk.”

The Russians are dying. She’s poker-faced. I ask if all the words are clear. We clarified the word “swelled up” (I don’t remember the Serbian translation now). Still poker-faced (which makes us laugh even harder).

Okay, another joke: “It was raining outside, and so was a regiment of Red Army soldiers.” (In Russian, “rain” and “regiment” share the same verb “went/walked.”) We’re laughing again, she isn’t. I ask: — Is everything clear? — Yes, everything’s clear… — Not funny? — No…

Meanwhile, I was laughing at Serbian jokes myself. And this is despite the closeness of the two languages.

— @dlinyj

Once an American woman came up to me and asked me to explain what’s going on with this joke. She just couldn’t figure out where to laugh. It took me about half an hour. She “kind of” got it, but not really.

A frog is swimming in a swamp. A crocodile comes up: — Hey frog, how’s the water, normal? The frog ignores him. Keeps swimming. — Hey frog, are you deaf or what? I’m asking, is the water warm? Ignores him, keeps swimming. — Are you completely deaf? Is the water warm or not? — I swim here as a woman, not as a thermometer.

The same thing will happen if you tell someone this joke:

“My wife said I should do lunges to stay in shape. That would be a big step forward.”

You can get it once you understand the word lunge and grasp what a dad joke is and how it works.

Don’t try to tell jokes you already know. Ever. Verify and search, listen and learn. You should only tell a joke to an English-speaking person if you heard it in English.

What’s more — while jokes are wildly popular for us, in the US they’re not as big a thing. But they have their own dad jokes and knock-knock jokes.

You’ll need to get used to how, for example, a knock-knock joke works. When someone says “Knock-knock,” you’re required to answer “Who is there?” — after which they’ll say a word or two. You’re supposed to repeat it, adding “…who?” at the end. After that you’ll get the punchline.

Who’s there? Luke. Luke who? Luke through the peep hole and find out.

Get on the internet and read this kind of joke. They’re untranslatable. Puns — kalambur in Russian — are also wildly popular.

By the way, you’ll fairly quickly realize that some jokes you’ve always thought of as Russian, actually aren’t.

Once a cheerful Scotsman sat down next to me and told the following joke.

So a guy walks into a bar one day and he can’t believe his eyes. There, in the corner, there’s this one-foot-tall man, in a little tuxedo, playing a tiny grand piano.

So the guy asks the bartender, “Where’d he come from?”

And the bartender’s, like, “There’s a genie in the men’s room who grants wishes.”

So the guy runs into the men’s room and, sure enough, there’s this genie. And the genie’s, like, “Your wish is my command.” So the guy’s, like, “O.K., I wish for world peace.” And there’s this big cloud of smoke—and then the room fills up with geese.

So the guy walks out of the men’s room and he’s, like, “Hey, bartender, I think your genie might be hard of hearing.”

And the bartender’s, like, “No kidding. You think I wished for a twelve-inch pianist?”

Yep. The same joke I knew from the eighth grade. Turns out — it’s a fully Scottish joke.

If you want to up your joke game for parties, I recommend watching all the “Saturday Night” type shows. If you’re in LA, that’s Jimmy Kimmel; if you’re in New York — Jimmy Fallon. Watch The Simpsons, Big Bang Theory, Silicon Valley, and similar shows in the original and soak it up.

Ask Questions Properly

A big difference between Russian and English is how we ask a question. Especially the intonation of the last word.

Are you coming to the store with us?

In Russian, the pitch of your voice should drop. Coming? It’s not very noticeable and we don’t think about it, but the question mark itself signals that your voice moves from a higher note to a lower one. What’s more, that’s not always the case — questions can be asked different ways.

In English, things are a bit scarier.

Are you going to a party?

paRTY? — that’s the correct intonation for an interrogative sentence in English.

Often your questions will get ignored or misunderstood if you don’t ask the question as a question. If you watch videos on YouTube, you’ll see there are a million opinions on this. Various accents allow falling intonation in certain cases at the end of a sentence.

But the simplest rule is: ask with rising intonation. It can’t hurt. If your question gets ignored, it might be because you didn’t squeak the way you were supposed to at the end of the sentence. Get used to it.

Learn to Write Emails

Maybe at your school there was some practice writing letters in English. Maybe you’ve read something like this.

Fortunately or unfortunately, in real life it’s not all that complicated. Let’s look at a real example from my correspondence with one of my US providers.

Hello Ivan,

I wanted to follow-up on the proposal I sent over to check if you had any questions or needed any additional information from my side.

Thank You for your time and I hope you’re having a great holiday season!

Best Regards, Ari Perez

From: Ivan Roganov Sent: Sunday, December 5, 2021 11:16 AM To: Arianna Perez Subject: Re: Flexential Proposal

Hello Arianna,

Thank you very much for a proposal!

Sincerely, Ivan.

On 12/1/21 15:09, Arianna Perez wrote: Hello Ivan,

It was a pleasure speaking with you and learning more about your company.

I have attached (2) quotes:

The first quote reflects our promo pricing which includes (1) free month of service, (1) hour of remote hands monthly and I have attached a data sheet for more information. The second quote reflects a ½ cab without promo pricing.

I have attached a data sheet of our Carson facility which had additional information. Please review and do not hesitate to reach out with any questions or comments.

Best Regards, Ari Perez

As you can see, it’s not all that ornate or twisted. The language is much simpler, but it’s still different from everyday speech. To answer an email correctly, I recommend you take all those instructions you learned to write by, draft something, and then dial the “ornateness” knob all the way down.

The signature can be Best Regards, Regards, Best, or Sincerely, but I rarely encountered Cordially yours, Fond regards, In appreciation, In sympathy, or Kind regards. If you have access to corporate email and can read the archive — do so. This stuff varies wildly by local color, and even if it’s acceptable in Los Angeles, it might be a bad call in New York.

The exception to this rule is official mail from a bank or government agency. If you’ve gotten one of those, off you go and don’t be shy. Sit down and write the most ornate letter you can manage.

One more very important piece of email advice. How do emails start in Russia?

Hello, Dmitry!

Now look at the emails above.

Hello Ivan,

Never put an exclamation mark at the start of an email. About five years ago an American woman came up to me and asked why all Russians write such weird emails. I asked her what the problem was, and she said the problem was the exclamation mark at the start of the email. To an American, the following text:

Hello, Dave!

Looks like:

HELLO, DAVE!!!

It’s basically allcaps to a Russian eye. The exclamation mark means your kids are meeting you after a two-week business trip and barreling at you in sixth gear screaming “Hi Daddy!” Break the habit. At the end of a greeting — just a comma.

What’s in My Name to Thee?

Before you step out onto the international stage, think seriously about your handle. For instance, I had a rough time. I kept getting asked why I was thinking about drugs when I picked my nick. Although in Russian it doesn’t even occur to you. Consult with your English-speaking acquaintances. Ask if your nick makes sense. Make sure it doesn’t trigger weird negative associations.

Otherwise you risk ending up in the kind of situation where Fedora Linux for Raspberry Pi got named Pidora. Everyone loved it, but we didn’t quite appreciate the joke.

Another point about names. There’s a great article I bookmarked a decade ago that makes the case clearly, and I still link to it every time we try to build a multilingual application.

In American English there’s no concept of an “otchestvo” (patronymic). There’s a Middle Name, which is just an arbitrary name that relatives might give you. It’s, let’s say, Plan B in case you and your mother-in-law didn’t agree on your name. To avoid starting a nuclear war over it, you get named with two names.

What’s more, unlike Bills and Teds, in English there are names that can be either feminine or masculine. Alex, Ash, Kit, Mel, Max, Nikky, Pat and many others. So you might meet a woman named Ashley Jane and a man named Jake Ashley.

On top of all that, when the US was being built 400 years ago, many settlers took as their last name the first name of their father. So sometimes you can run into a person called Taylor Smith (a woman) and Smith Taylor (a man).

The use of a middle name is completely arbitrary. When dealing with government agencies, you’ll need to provide your full real name and middle name, but it’s often the case that other people never know somebody’s full name. For Americans this is convenient — if you got really unlucky with your name, you have a “spare” and you can use a different one. What’s more, pseudonyms are way more widespread than in Russia.

In this whole name salad, the devil himself would break a leg. But in the US there’s no such thing as an “otchestvo.” Yes, there’s the word surname — they taught us to use it in school. Although if you actually read the dictionary, you’ll find out that surname doesn’t mean patronymic at all. The word for patronymic is patronymic, and I’ve never used it once in conversation with foreigners. I’ve never mentioned my patronymic to anyone in the US. Better that than listening to them butcher it. And if someone really wants to know, I sit down and explain that in Russia we don’t have a middle name and we use patronymics. Then I explain the suffixes and the rules for assigning these patronymics.

After that I gently ask them never to call me by my patronymic, since it isn’t my name.

In the US, given how convoluted the name system is, people have a lot of opinions about names. Take the standard name Kirsten. Or Kristen, Kiersten, Kristien, or whatever. There’s Ashly and Ashley, there might be Maximilien and Maximilian. Every time you meet someone, make sure you wrote their name down correctly. Sometimes people get offended.

Because of this whole mess, you can absolutely calmly ask your colleagues to call you one thing or another and gently insist that they actually do — it’s normal.

You’re not required to change your name when working in the US. But sometimes it’s even necessary. For instance — you might find a great Instagram profile of one Nastya Vagina. But if you write something like that in the US, at the very least people will look at you sideways. At worst, you might get fired for inappropriate behavior.

The Chinese, for example, all change their names when they arrive in the US. Because no matter how they write their names with different Chinese characters, in transliteration it’ll all come out as Wei, Li, Lin, Ku, Min, Na, Qian and Suyin. So they all switch to American-style names, because telling apart which Lin out of the bunch of Lins is the specific Lin who committed a broken patch to prod would be impossible.

So if you got unlucky with your name, or your name has the letters Ts or Shch in it (these letters cause quiet horror during transliteration), then you can call yourself whatever you want. But if you’ve already introduced yourself with one name, then keep using that name and never — except for government agencies — mention your real name to anyone. Otherwise everyone will decide you’re insecure or up to something.

Conclusion

Ask questions. Nobody has ever made fun of someone for sincerely asking a question. Insisting you’re right after you said or did something stupid because you didn’t bother to figure it out — that’s full cringe. But to walk up to someone and ask, in human fashion, what on earth “Sheeeesh” means — they’ll usually be enthusiastic about explaining.

Keep these things in mind, and you’ll find yourself in situations where you’re so cringe, I can’t stand this or where I have no idea what you just said much less often.