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November 29, 2006

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral

Another thing I learned last weekend. Mexicans, at least (maybe this is common to hispanohablantes), differentiate when indicating with their hands the size of things that are:

The first, heights of people, is demonstrated with the index finger extended and the rest of the hand closed. It's like you're making a "we're number one" gesture, and then locating it in space to show how tall someone is. The finger is held vertically, not horizontally.

For animals, height is demonstrated by the open hand, with the fingers together. The palm of the hand is like a vertical axis, with the palm facing the side, not facing up or down. The first one seems strange to me, but this one seems downright awkward.

For things, the same hand shape is used and held with the palm facing down, generally as we gringos would tend to indicate the height of any thing, animate or inanimate, person or animal.

Posted by crispy at November 29, 2006 06:00 AM

Comments

Speaking of HANDS, the office just ran out of toilet paper and ... well.

Posted by: Jon at November 29, 2006 10:14 PM

Remember that when you're indicating the height of a person, the index finger is held up and your thumb and the rest of the fingers are doubled over--and the palm of the hand is always facing you.

[crispy says: Yeah, sorry. I messed that up. I was corrected on that today by our neighbor Alberto too. So it's kind of like you're going to give someone the finger, but you use your index finger, and you don't extend it quite as stiffly.]

Posted by: Cristina at November 30, 2006 11:26 AM

can we see pictures, with appropriate backgrounds of the objects being described? this IS an interactive multimedia experience we are checkin' out here on 'el crispito'

[crispy says: Interesting that you should mention that, as I was thinking of doing that. The problem is one of getting things posted in a timely manner. It takes me forever just to put up photos of things, and it's bad enough just to write a three paragraph blog entry of nothing but text. Our downstairs neighbor is already freaked out that I never leave the apartment (not true, I assure you), so I don't need some project that takes four hours just so I can include photographs of my hand superimposed over stock photos.]

Posted by: brett at December 1, 2006 11:06 AM