Hello Linguaphilists...

I have a colleague looking for information about the challenges that L1 Arabic speakers have when communicating in English, particularly in terms of directness/indirectness and whether they get read as being too indirect and unhelpful by English speakers.

This came about because I was talking about how much more direct German can be than English, and that even though I speak German and know that "Klar, wir treffen uns am sechs Uhr" is a perfectly ordinary sentence, I can still get a bit taken aback when I hear a L1 German speaker say exactly the same thing in English ("Right! We'll meet at six!"), because in English I'd expect to hear it phrased as a suggestion. ("Great, so we meet at six?") So it's that kind of thing - particularly around how Arabic phrasing can sound "off" in not necessarily identifiable ways in English. He's not mentioned any particular dialect, so any versions or Arabic or general Arabic stuff would be helpful.

Thanks very much!