European Gestures
 |
| European gestures are different from ours. Learn them for a flawless communication experience! |
By Rick Steves
In Europe, gestures can contribute to the language barrier. Here are a few common gestures, their meanings, and where you're likely to see them:Fingertips kiss: Gently bring the fingers and thumb of your right hand together, raise to your lips, kiss lightly, and joyfully toss your fingers and thumb into the air. This gesture is used commonly in France, Spain, Greece, and Germany as a form of praise. It can mean sexy, delicious, divine, or wonderful. Be careful — tourists look silly when they overemphasize this subtle action.
Hand purse: Straighten the fingers and thumb of one hand, bringing them all together and making an upward point about a foot in front of your face. Your hand can be held still or moved a little up and down at the wrist. This is a common and very Italian gesture for a query. It is used to say "What do you want?" or "What are you doing?" or "What is it?" or "What's new?" It can also be used as an insult to say "You fool." The hand purse can also mean "fear" (France), "a lot" (Spain), and "good" (Greece and Turkey).
Cheek screw: Make a fist, stick out your index finger, and (without piercing the skin) screw it into your cheek. The cheek screw is used widely and almost exclusively in Italy to mean good, lovely, beautiful. Many Italians also use it to mean clever. But be careful: In southern Spain, the cheek screw is used to call a man effeminate.
Eyelid pull: Place your extended forefinger below the center of your eye and pull the skin downward. In France and Greece this means "I am alert. I'm looking. You can't fool me." In Italy and Spain, it's a friendlier warning, meaning "Be alert, that guy is clever."
Forearm jerk: Clench your right fist and jerk your forearm up as you slap your right bicep with your left palm. This is a rude phallic gesture that men throughout southern Europe often use the way many Americans "give someone the finger." This jumbo version of "flipping the bird" says "I'm superior" (it's an action some monkeys actually do with their penises to insult their peers). This "get lost" or "up yours" gesture is occasionally used by rude men in Britain and Germany as more of an "I want you" gesture about (but never to) a sexy woman.
Chin flick: Tilt your head back slightly and flick the back of your fingers forward in an arc from under your chin. In Italy and France, this means "I'm not interested, you bore me," or "You bother me." In southern Italy it can mean "No."
"Thumbs up," "V for Victory," and more: The "thumbs up" sign popular in the United States is used widely in France and Germany to say "OK." (Note that it also represents the number one when counting throughout Europe.) The "V for victory" sign is used in most of Europe as in the United States. (Beware — the V with your palm toward you is the rudest of gestures in Britain.) "Expensive" is often shown by shaking your hand and sucking in like you just burned yourself. In Greece and Turkey, you signal "no" by jerking your eyebrows and head upward. In Bulgaria and Albania,"OK" is indicated by happily shaking your head left and right - as if you were signaling "no" in the US.
To beckon someone, remember that in northern Europe you bring your palm up, and in the south you wave it down. While most people greet each other by waving with their palm out, you'll find many Italians wave "at themselves" as infants do, with their palm towards their face. Ciao-ciao.
Updated for 2011. For lots more tips, check out our best-selling Europe Through the Back Door travel skills guidebook.
BODY LANGUAGE IN ASIA :
The top 10 hand gestures you’d better get right
Anybody remember when George H W Bush tried to signal ‘peace’ during a visit to Australia in the 90s by giving a large crowd the time-honoured two-fingered salute? Though he didn’t know it at the time, he was actually telling the whole crowd to go screw themselves - and all because he made the seemingly innocuous error that his palm was facing inwards instead of outwards.Nacho highlighted the danger of using certain hand gestures when travelling in an earlier post, as some have very different meanings in some countries from what we as Westerners believe them to stand for. Let’s take a look, shall we?
1. The “Wanker”
This one actually has a universal meaning; it was just too good not to include in any compilation of hand gestures. There aren’t many places on earth where you could get away with frantically fist-pumping at somebody - I’d imagine because masturbating’s the same wherever you go. Even in Japan.
 |
Particularly popular with fans at football matches to taunt opposition players, Tony Blair famously copped a bit of embarrassment when the uncensored version of a photograph of him during his Oxford University days was shown on BBC2’s Newsnight: a photo that had later been photoshopped by the supplying press agency to cover up Blair’s rude – and delightfully unambiguous – hand gesture. Yes, Tony. You are. |
2. The “Thumbs-Up”
First of all, let’s quash the urban legend of the
‘thumbs-up/thumbs-down’ being used by the audience in the Roman coliseum
to vote on the life or death of a defeated gladiator, as furthered by
such movies as Gladiator and Spartacus. There’s no evidence for this, and it’s just massively unlikely. Sorry.While Western culture has become used to the thumbs-up as a positive, informal signal, generally indicating a job well done (probably stemming from World War II pilots using the signal to communicate that they were “good to go” with ground crews), there are cultures where a thumbs-up may land you in trouble. In most of Latin America and West Africa, as well as Greece, Russia, Sardinia and the south of Italy, the thumbs-up basically means the same as the middle finger: “sit on it and swivel”. Also, it’s generally not recommended to use the thumbs-up around the Middle East as it’s pretty much the biggest insult out there – and even worse if you pull off the emphatic version with both hands - so no Fonzie impressions, please.
Rather more charming is a thumbs-up in Germany and in the less-Westernised areas of Japan – they just see it as the hand signal for the number one. Bless.
3. The “Moutza”
Opening your palm to your target and stretching out your fingers seems
harmless enough to most Westerners. Most of us would think you’re
waving. In Greece, however, the gesture is known as a moutza,
and is one of their most traditional manual insults. With fingers
slightly apart, you thrust your hand into your target’s face, usually
coupling the gesture with a brash “na!”, meaning “here you
go!”. The basic suggestion is something like “eat shit”, implying that
you’re not particularly impressed and would rather the target of the moutza
leave you alone – comparable to the American interpretation of the same
signal as “talk to the hand, because the face isn’t listening”.The gesture is also an insulting one in Pakistan and many parts of Africa. The Japanese use a very similar sign to insult their old enemies, the Koreans. Roughly translating as ‘animal’, the signal is similar to the moutza in every way except they tuck the thumb into the palm.
Amusingly, Microsoft used to use a very similar-looking hand signal as an icon for warning dialogs in previous versions of Windows – what Greek users must have thought of that, I don’t know… “This application has performed an illegal operation - now, eat shit!”.
4. The “Dog Call”
Curling your index finger towards you in a summoning motion is a gesture generally linked with seductive temptresses in Hollywood movies, beckoning for their targeted men to follow them into another room.
Beware, however, of using this gesture in the Philippines
– it’s a method of communication considered worthy only to use on dogs,
and is actually punishable by arrest. Worst of all, they’ll break your
index finger in order to prevent you from committing the same crime
again!5. The “A-OK”
Mainly used by scuba divers to mean “OK” (to prevent ambiguity with the thumbs-up sign, which means “ascend”), this hand gesture is generally called ‘A-OK’, and in America and the UK is often used to tell somebody that they’ve made a great meal, as talking with your mouth would just be impolite. Essentially the meaning comes out as “great”, or “absolutely fine”.
Not
so, however, in a few countries in Europe, where the numerical
interpretation gives the signal an insulting overtone – essentially
you’re telling them that you think they’re a ‘zero’.Far worse, however, is the meaning in Brazil, Germany and a few Mediterranean countries: the circular shape of the gesture gives it the meaning of “anus”, and is therefore used to call somebody an “asshole”, or, by extension, a homosexual. You probably wouldn’t learn that in most of the German courses London has to offer.
6. The “Cutis”
While there isn’t really an equivalent in Western culture, the cutis in Indian and Pakistani culture is basically a thumbs-up, except you push the nail on your thumb against your front teeth and flick, while saying “cutta!”.
It basically amounts to “screw you”, and famously appeared in the media
when Pakistani fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar made the gesture in Melbourne
as he left the field for a rain delay during the 2004 test series
against Australia.7. The “V Sign”
The age-old ‘V sign’ comes in two formats: one with the palm faced outwards, and one with the palm inwards. In America the two hand signals mean the same thing – ‘victory’, as popularised by Richard Nixon, or ‘peace and love’, which seemed to become the primary meaning after anti-Vietnam protesters used it during the 60s.
However, if the outside of your hand is facing your target, you’re giving somebody a long-established insult in Great Britain and many English-speaking countries such as Australia, Ireland and New Zealand.
Winston Churchill famously used the ‘incorrect’ version of the V sign
during the early years of the war, switching round later when he’d been
told by his advisors that he wasn’t exactly giving the lower social
orders a positive message. The V sign is also considered rude in Italy, especially if you place your nose between the two fingers, making the gesture resemble a crude vagina.I myself have almost seen a fight start as a result of an American tourist ordering drinks in an English pub: when asked how many pints he wanted, he simply stuck two fingers up and looked straight into the eyes of the barman – perfectly normal on the other side of the Atlantic (it’s actually the signal for the number 2 in American Sign Language), but it’s fighting talk to the British.
8. The “Fig”
Nothing more than a fist with the thumb poking out from between the index and middle fingers, the mano fico (literally ‘fig hand’)
is a gesture of Roman origin, used as a positive gesture to encourage
good luck and fertility, and ward away the ‘evil eye’. The sexual nuance
comes from from the hand’s resemblance to the female private parts (fica is actually Italian slang for “vulva”), with the nub of the thumb representing the clitoris.There seems to be a lack of positive meaning to this sign these days, however. If you’re doing the ‘fig’, it probably means you’re denoting a letter T in American Sign Language. But if somebody else is giving you the same gesture (especially if they are of the Asian persuasion), they’re probably giving you a rather disparaging insult, roughly equivalent to “fuck you!”. This hand sign is also highly disparaging to Italians and Turks, and in India would be taken as a threatening gesture. Most non-deaf Americans or Brits, however, would simply see the mano fico as a bizarre-looking fist.
9. The “Corna”
Consisting of a clenched fist with the second and fifth fingers straightened out, the corna (‘horns’) hand gesture has most recently been adopted by fans of rock and heavy metal music, first used by Black Sabbath vocalist Ronnie James Dio. The gesture carries only a vague meaning, implying the presence of Satan, malevolence and loud guitar music, and is used in much the same way as headbanging. The gesture was actually popularised as a Satanic salute during the 1960s, appearing in many editions of the Satanic Bible. Nowadays many Americans use the gesture simply to mean “rock on”, or in support of the University of Texas in Austin (known as the “Hook ‘em Horns”).
Occasionally used by baseball players to indicate “two outs”, the corna is actually a positive hand gesture in Buddhism and Hinduism, known as the Karana Mudra in such circles, and is used to dispel evil – an interestingly opposite meaning to its contemporary significance.Historically, however, the symbol basically means “cuckold” (or rather, “your wife is cheating on you”), and its origins are Mediterranean, possibly dating back to Ancient Greece. The corna is still popular in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Colombia, Brazil, Albania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and seems to be used most often to disagree with football referees - perhaps their wives are taking advantage of their husband’s occupation to score with hunky football players - though only when the referee make an incorrect decision, of course…
Of course, if you’re thinking of learning that in a Spanish course London is probably the best place to start…
10. “The Finger”
Most
likely derived from Ancient Greece, ‘the finger’ is one of the most
widespread obscene gestures throughout the Western world. In a handful
of Mediterranean and Arab countries
the index finger is preferred to the middle, but the meaning remains
crystal clear. There are a myriad of different stories for the origin of
the finger (going back as far as 2500 years), making mention of Greek
tragedies, phallic representation, perverse Roman emperors, English
longbowmen, and annoyed deaf people - but we just don’t know.Also known as the ‘flip-off’, the ‘bird’, the ‘highway salute’, ‘digitus impudicus’ and the ‘One-Fingered Victory Salute’ (thanks to President Bush’s famous TV blooper), the middle finger is probably the most universally-understood hand gesture in the world. This is owed mostly to its age, the sheer simplicity of the gesture, as well as the human preoccupation with somehow relating everything back to sexual organs.
Of course there are regional differences, from half-extending the second and fourth fingers (no doubt to represent the ‘balls’ either side of the middle finger ‘dick’) or combining the finger with another rude gesture, to being as creative as holding up your middle three fingers and telling your target to “read between the lines”.
from: http://www.languagetrainers.co.uk/blog/2007/09/24/top-10-hand-gestures/
HAND GESTURES AROUND THE WORLD
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου