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Mouth gestures and their meanings around the world (2005)
- soared 3y agoI wonder where the author learned English - there are a lot of words and phrases in this article/book that I’ve never heard before! To simper, adoration, put on airs, amorous, interlocutor, etc
- tinix 3y agothe author is French. these are just Latin derived words.
- toadi 3y agoNot sure what the point of your comment was. But if he is French and that is connected to the Latin hence he had good(weird?) vocabulary. English vocab is also mostly derived from Latin. "80% of the words in the English dictionary are Latin derived." https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-origins/ https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-origins/
- tinix 3y agoright, that's exactly my point, many French words are also English. amorous, etc... it's no surprise, as you say... every word op listed is Latin root and French too.
- toadi 3y agoEnglish is my 3rd language. I read only English not in my native tongue. I used to keep a booklet with me write down words I didn't understand. Looked them up later. After a while had a big list which I regularly. Kindle shows you the meaning automatically now and keeps also a list of words which I regularly review. Over time your vocabulary gets much wider. I have native English speakers asking me where I got certain words from because they are not often used spoken. Another trick is when you write look up synonyms instead of using the same word over and over again. But in the words you dropped I learned at least 1 new one. To simper :)
- ask_b123 3y agoSounds like a Romance language.
- nunuvit 3y agoThey're still used, but they sound a bit historical outside of specific contexts such as ... simper in written fiction, adoration in Catholicism, interlocutor in learning about language and communication, amorous to describe the nature of an adult relationship or activity in a way that's humorously obvious but safe for work. A French author studying communication and writing in English could reasonably encounter all of them multiple times. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=simper%2Cadoration%2Camorous%2Cinterlocutor%2Cput+on+airs&year_start=1500&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=simper%2Cadora...
- jonahx 3y agoAs a native English speaker, I consider all of these just barely outside the range of common. "adoration", "amorous", and "put on airs", especially -- I'd be very surprised if a college-educated, native speaker had never heard these.
- Semaphor 3y agoEnglish as 2nd language, only "simper" was new to me (and is actually close-ish to the modern "simping"). My favourite new word I learned is from "Malazan Book of the Fallen": "susurration" [0], a word that, in my experience, even many native speakers don’t know, yet is uniquely beautiful (to me). [0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/susurration https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/susurration
- sph 3y agoTo whisper in Italian is sussurrare (mind the double s)
- fsckboy 3y agoif you've read literature from 1850 to 1950 you've encountered these words, stuff like Dickens, Twain, Bronte, Mann, Eliot, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, etc.
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoI think listening to endless cassette audiobooks of Just William and Jeeves and Wooster on car journeys was probably the single best thing to happen to my English learning as a child. The vocabulary of the first half of the 20th century is much wider than I expect from more recent books. I'd actually be surprised if any of those words didn't occur at least once. "Simper" certainly did: Violet Elizabeth did so at every opportunity when adults were around.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- simonebrunozzi 3y agoI do not trust this article. > 5 / to bring one’s hand toward one’s mouth without quite touching it Modesty. A gesture of eloquence employed by the great orators of antiquity. AFAIK, this is the wrong explanation. The gesture is still in use today in Italy, and its meaning is different.
- swalling 3y agoGestures might seem trivial but depending on context cultural miscommunication here can have deadly results. For example, the Middle Eastern hand gesture for "stop" is totally different than American hand signals. The confusion probably caused at least a few of the hundreds of Iraqi civilians shot at traffic checkpoints by US soldiers. https://savageminds.org/2008/09/28/how-not-to-signal-stop/ https://savageminds.org/2008/09/28/how-not-to-signal-stop/
- unwind 3y agoThat is horrible if true (I find it hard to believe that US military personnel is trained to use "tactical" hand signals when trying to communicate with the general public). However, it says that the policy is to first hand signal, then fire warning shots, and then they are authorized to use deadly force. So, if these killings are because people don't understand hand gestures, and assuming policy is followed, they also don't understand warning shots, which seems like a stretch.
- duchenne 3y agoWhen hearing gunshots from the occupying soldiers, many people would just run away.
- MayeulC 3y ago> hard to believe that US military personnel is trained to use "tactical" hand signals This (closed fist) is not the signal in question. Discussed a bit later in the article is the very common (in western culture) raised palm signal, which apparently means "welcome" to an Iraqi.
- swalling 3y agoYes precisely. The common hand gesture for "stop" is different in the Middle East, it has nothing to do with use of military-specific gestures.
- bibelo 3y agoaw damn creepy drawings
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y agoHilarious. Growing up in Portugal, what I learned from my family was "don't put your hands in your mouth" and "hands are dirty". Objectively superior to this nonsense.
- stavros 3y agoOnly four or five of these have fingers actually go into the mouth, though. Plus, I don't know how superior not putting your hands in your mouth is at expressing things.
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y agoIt's superior in hygiene.