Gestures across cultures

the middle finger in west may mean another thing in the east.
a clip of the best and fascinating gestures from around the world. taken from BBC documentary the human animal- language of the body

Category:

Education

Tags:

• insults
• hand
• gestures
• and
• signals
• BBC
• documentary
• the
• human
• animal
• language
• of
• body
• middle
• finger
• thumbs
• up
• down
• nod
• shaking
• head
• india
• europe

[MiTm4x]

fascinating video! is it possible to purchase this in whole?

[putitallontheline]

yes. i cant upload the whole vid cause it's youtube.

[putitallontheline]

haha. glad you liked it!

[MarielynetteJohnson]

There's no mention of the eyebrow-smile expression of greeting. I did not know of this universal gesture till I was told. Whenever you recognize someone at a distance, you (1) raise & lower your eyebrows, (2) smile at him.

[tinachen1019]

can someone tell me who is the speaker, and what's his name? please:)

[natynix]

we watched this for a class lol

[sumanchat86]

I am from the northern part of India. Initially the Yes and the No gestures were very confusing to me when I cane to the southern part of the country. I used to think every Yes as a No. Here people wobble their head for Yes as well as for No. :D

[SpookyFoxes]

Can I know what this is, or what it is called. I would like to cite it for a research project, but I would need to know the name of the actual video, and who made it originally.

[JacqBLUEjay]

Thanks, always good to know for travelers and when receiving foreign guests.

[RobbiePaulPeeters]

Great vid!

[typo6t]

In Bulgaria, it was really wierd that, you ask a waitress for coffee and she leaves shaking her head, so you go "well perhaps they dont have coffee" after a couple minutes, she brings your coffee.. Takes some time getting used to it.

in addition, in Turkey, if you make a circle with your thumb and pointer, showing your palm to the other person, it means "OK", "good", if you do it showing the back of your hand to the other person, it means queer, fag...

[typo6t]

I like this:) lol i m Turkish and its so true that you can see villagers shaking hands in this prolonged ridiculous way during negotiations. It s not really in real life in cities though, mostly a tradition thing that is about to die out. Oh and the arm thrust insult, the insult is not the ARM but the fingers there. He pokes his thumb out between his pointer and middle finger while making a fist. This gesture symbolises *cough* copulation. Also i bet he got a beating for doing that....

[estetty]

@putitallontheline Perhaps you could split it into 10 min parts?