How to have a Russian accent - Rule 0

Watching a lot of Hollywood movies, it used to surprise me how horrible peoples' supposedly "Russian" accents were. Now that I'm older and watch less movies (and way less action movies), Russians are no longer the stereotypical villains of screen on one hand, and there are more russophones in Hollywood (probably) on the other, I don't know if it's as bad. Still, a lot of people can't do a good Russian accent. Not least of them my freind V., whom we've been trying to teach. So what does it involve? I'm going to try to give some pointers. Watch this space!

Rule 0. No Russian words! This is the most obvious thing in the world to make a reasonable foreign accent, yet it's often ignored even by professional actors. In general if x is a foreign language, and you are not actually extremely fluent in x, you should NOT EVER have x words in your x-accented English. The problem is not even (at least not mainly) that you will give away your lack of proficiency in the source language, though this is also true. The problem is that it is not something an actual accent would ever contain. A Scottish person could stick in scots English words into their English when speaking to an American - whether because they are proud of their scots heritage or because they don't realise that this word wouldn't sound normal in standard American English speech. But no Russian person is going to say "droog" or "tovarisch" in an English sentence - they are trying to speak English, not to ridicule themselves! They realise that "tovarisch" isn't actually an English word! If they will ever use a Russian word, it will be for a word that they don't know in English, but have some basis for thinking might be recognizable to an English speaker in its Russian form. Or maybe in using a false friend. But how to say "hello", "friend" "comrade" or whatever, that's some of the first things you learn. A good example of how to do this right is Nabokov's Pnin saying "quittance" (квитанция) when he means "receipt". When I read that, I nearly glowed with appreciation. But the thing is, you and I are not Nabokov. Neither you nor I will ever know either Russian or English to the same order of magnitude that he knew both. So, my advice is, don't try. And definitely don't try on the fly. You can do a perfectly believable, more than serviceable accent without ever using Russian words.

The Bottom Line:

Normal English phrase: "Yes, my friend, I am from Russia"

Russian accented English phrase: "Yes, my friend, I am from Russia"

Ridiculously bad phrase: "Da, my droog, I am from Rossiya"