Language Trainers Blog

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.

Interestingly, in Greece and Portugal the gesture is made with the palm facing the ground, implying that the person is rather fonder of wanking other men as opposed to himself.

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”.

What have we learned here? Well, perhaps that endless French lessons aren’t necessarily going to make you immune to insulting French people.

---

So, there you have it – ten of the most popular (and most globally misunderstood) hand gestures, in all their glory. I’ll end this post by offering the same advice Nacho did in his post – the best idea when travelling abroad is probably to keep both hands pinned to your sides.

Permanently.

Do you think they should cover British slang and our most popular hand gestures as part of the English courses London has to offer?

While researching palindromes for another post, I managed to find a variant of them. This kind of word or phrase makes sense when reversed, but unlike palindromes do not read exactly the same forwards as they do backwards. The more astute among you might have noticed that semordnilap is actually the word palindromes spelled in reverse.

Take a look at some examples of semordnilaps, also known as heteropalindromes, semi- or half-palindromes, reversgrams, mynoretehs, word reversals, or anadromes:

diaper / repaid	straw / warts	star / rats
god / dog	lived / devil	desserts / stressed
war / raw	samaroid / dioramas	deliver no evil / live on reviled

Can you think of any more?

A while ago I met two Irish students of Spanish. I thought it might be amusing to ask them about typical Irish greetings, and the one they told me was ‘How is she cutting?’, with the supposed answer ‘Top of the bog’.

Of course I simply accepted this strange idiomatic exchange without even trying to analyse it. But later I decided to try it with other English speakers, who weren’t of Irish origin. To my surprise, no matter where in England they were from, they just stared at me in a funny way. I tried to explain what I meant and they confessed it was the first time they heard the phrase – it is very interesting how the ‘same language’ can be so different that it can actually hinder communication among their speakers.

Another seemingly strange method of greeting between Irishmen and women is asking the question “What’s the craic?”; “craic” (pronounced ‘crack’) being an originally Gaelic word for debauchery of any kind. The standard response to this question is “The craic’s 90″.

Perhaps the most famous Irish greeting of all is ‘Top of the morning to you’. Any Irish out there care to fill us in with the correct response? That’d be grand.

When an advertising slogan becomes part of daily speech, it means their creators have succeeded.

The Dutch use the following phrase when a problem occurs: ‘Even Apeldoorn Bellen’, which, according to what I was told, can be translated as ‘Let’s call Apeldoorn’. Apeldoorn is a place famous for its insurance companies, and there have been some advertising campaigns for a company which used this slogan. Here’s one of them.

I think a good, functional translation to English could be ‘Houston, we have a problem’; both have been taken by people to mean the same thing; the former from a TV advert, the latter from a movie.

Rules or risks? Learning a foreign language is just one form of learning in general; therefore, each individual will employ the approach that he or she usually applies to other learning situations.

When it comes to foreign languages, one kind of learner prefers a highly structured approach, with plenty of explanations in the mother tongue, graded exercises, constant correction, and careful, airtight rules of formulation. This type of learner is generally very analytical, reflective, and reluctant to say anything in the foreign language that is not grammatically perfect. This person is a rule learner.

A second type of learner relies more on intuition, the gathering of examples, and imitation. He or she is willing to take risks, and is not afraid to make errors in the target language, in the hope that they will be corrected at some point down the line. Such people have become known to me as language disciples – following the language and learning as they go instead of ingesting it in bite-size chunks.

There is no evidence that one type of learner is more successful than the other. What is more important is that the learner’s style is appropriate to the particular task. If the task is to communicate orally in a real-life situation, then risk-taking would be the more efficient path to your goal. If the task is to say or write something correctly, then the rules should be consulted.

It is helpful for each learner’s preferences to be accommodated in the classroom. You may thus wish to examine your own preferences and communicate them to your teacher. For instance, if you feel that you need rules and regulation, you may be a little uncomfortable in a classroom dedicated to imitation and repetition of dialogue, and you might want to ask the teacher for further explanation. If, on the other hand, you feel that you learn more from being exposed to the language and from making your own inferences, you may feel ill at ease in a classroom where the teacher takes time painstakingly explaining the new grammar in your native language, and you would do well to ask the teacher for more practice in speaking.

Some of the most fascinating examples of similarities and differences between languages are found in idioms and set expressions. Language learners are often surprised when a rather unusual expression has a word-for-word equivalent in another language. Just as often, they may be surprised to find that an expression does not have an equivalent in another language or that the equivalent differs in some ways.

Here are some expressions that rather unexpectedly have very similar equivalents in English, Spanish, and Russian – three languages that, although related, are quite far removed in most ways:

English: to shed crocodile tears
Russian: lit’ krokodilovy slyozy
Meaning: to pretend to cry in order to gain sympathy

English: to hit the ceiling
Spanish: tocar el cielo con las manos (literally “to take the sky in one’s hands”)
Meaning: to reach the limit; usually of your patience

English: to know something inside out
Russian: znat’ vdol’ I poperyok (literally “to know something lengthwise and crosswise”)
Meaning: to know something very well

English: to have nine lives
Spanish: tener siete vidas (literally “to have seven lives”)
Russian: dvuzhil’niy (literally “one with two lives”)
Meaning: to be good at avoiding death/danger

English: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”
Russian: “v Tulu so svoim samovarom ne ezdyat” (literally “don’t go to Tula with your own samovar”).
Meaning: When visiting a strange place, it’s best to follow the lead of the locals

On the other hand, there are no equivalents in English for the following Spanish idioms – see if you can guess what they mean from their literal translation:

cara de viernes (literally “Friday face”) :: a thin, wan face
decir cuatro verdades (literally “to tell four truths”) :: to speak one’s mind freely
saber más que las culebras (literally “to know more than the snakes”) :: to be cunning

At the same time, no language seems to have a word for word equivalent for the English expression “to go bananas” – although there is always a way to express the concept of craziness, no other language seems to use a fruit to draw the comparison between sanity and ‘going a little bit nuts’ (or perhaps in this case, a little ‘fruity’).

There are a number of justifications for the use of small groups in language classrooms. Many of them would be worth recommending, whatever the model of language acquisition or instructions being followed. Small groups provide greater intensity of involvement, so that the quality of language practice is increased, along with the opportunities for feedback and monitoring, given adequate guidance and preparation by the teacher.

The setting is more natural than that of a fuller class, as the size of the group resembles that of normal conversational groupings. Because of this, the stress and anxiety which generally accompanies ‘public’ performance in the classroom should be reduced. Experience also suggests that placing students in small groups assists individualisation, since each group, being limited by its own capacities, can determine its own appropriate level of work far more quickly and effectively than a larger class. Furthermore, co-operation with your peers is ideologically desirable, especially in educational systems which advocate socialist principles.

Because the small group simulates natural conversational settings more closely than any other mode of classroom organisation, it will most effectively combine all aspects of communication, learning, and human interaction referred to in the justifications cited above, in the most integrated, non-threatening, and flexible mode of class organisation available to the teacher.

Words having to do with anatomy and sex – and words even vaguely suggesting anatomical or sexual matters – have, especially in American culture, remarkable affective connotations.

Ladies of the last century could not bring themselves to say “breast” or “leg” – not even when speaking about chicken – so the terms “white meat” and “dark meat” were substituted. It was thought inelegant to speak of “going to bed”, and “to retire” was coined instead. In rural America there are many euphemisms for the word “bull”; among them are “he-cow”, “cow critter”, “male cow”, and even “gentleman cow”.

But Americans are not alone in their delicacy about such matters. When D. H. Lawrence’s first novel, The White Peacock (1911) was published, the author was widely and vigorously criticised for having used (in innocuous context) the word “stallion”. In a 1962 presentation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel in front of the British Royal Family, “Our hearts are warm, our bellies are full” was changed to “Our hearts are warm and we are full”.

These verbal taboos, though sometimes amusing, also produce serious problems, since they prevent frank discussion of sexual matters. Social workers report that young people of junior high school and high school age who contract venereal disease, become pregnant out of wedlock, and get into other serious trouble of this kind, are almost always profoundly ignorant of the most elementary facts about sex and procreation. Their ignorance is apparently due to the fact that neither they nor their parents have a vocabulary in which to discuss such matters: the non-technical vocabulary of sex is too coarse and shocking to be used, whilst the technical, medical vocabulary is unknown to them. The social workers find, therefore, that the first step in helping these young people is usually linguistic: they have to be taught a vocabulary in which they can talk about their problems before they can be helped further.

In every language, there seems to be certain “unmentionables” – words of such strong affective connotations that they cannot be utilised during polite discourse. In English, the first of these that come to mind are, of course, words dealing with excretion and sex. We ask movie ushers and petrol station attendants where the “lounge” or “rest room” is, although we usually have no intention of lounging or resting. “Powder room” is another euphemism for the same facility, also known as a “toilet”, which itself is an earlier euphemism.

Indeed, it is impossible in polite society to state, without having to resort to baby-talk or a medical vocabulary, your true purpose for needing to use the “rest room” (it’s not where you “wash your hands”).

Money is another subject about which communication is in some ways inhibited. It is all right to mention sums of money, such as “ten thousand dollars” or “two dollars and fifty cents”. But it is considered bad taste to inquire directly into other people’s financial affairs, unless such an inquiry is necessary in the course of business. When creditors send bills, they practically never mention money, although that is, of course, what they are writing about. There are many circumlocutions: “We beg to call your attention to what might be an oversight on your part”; “We would appreciate your early attention to this matter”; “May we look forward to an early remittance”…

The fear of death carries over, quite understandably in view of the widespread confusion of symbols with the concepts they symbolise, into fear of the words having to do with death. Many people, therefore, instead of saying “died”, substitute such euphemistic expressions as “passed away”, “gone to meet his maker”, “departed”, and “gone west”. In Japanese, the word for death, “shi”, happens to have the same pronunciation as the word for the number four. This coincidence results in many linguistically awkward situations, since people generally avoid “shi” in the discussion of numbers and prices, and use “yon”, a word of different origin, instead.