It was recently impressed on me that my biggest problem with speaking Japanese lay in the fluctuation of my speech. Americans who learn Japanese, it would seem, typically have the bad habit of raising and lowering their voices at inappropriate times. It struck me then that Japanese people, likewise, do carry a strange sort of monotone when speaking English. This is in spite of the fact that their country is among the most mountainous on Earth. It would seem that they possess too many actual hills and valleys in their country to tolerate any of the figurative ones we attempt to create in their language. But can you really blame us for our vacillating speech, what with our endless stretches of flat land? Perhaps we should all just switch countries.