A recent survey reveals that as a nation, we use hand gestures to aid communication whilst abroad far more than other Europeans.
A whopping 60% of us admit to using hand gestures, compared to 48% of Italians and 46% of French. However, with gestures meaning different things from country to country, over 80% of us aren’t actually familiar with the meanings of the hand gestures we are using. For instance the ‘Rock n’Roll’ hand sign is actually highly offensive in France, Italy and Spain. It’s not only us Brits that are making this mistake, with 12% of Italians and 11% of Spaniards and French admitting to having no idea a two-fingered salute is highly insulting in our culture.
It’s no secret that different nations express emotions in different ways and what may seem perfectly harmless to us can be highly offensive to other nationalities. Generations develop new hand gestures all the time so it would be impossible to keep up with what’s acceptable and what’s not, but it’s always worth thinking before signalling on sunnier shores!
