Body language

Italians and Jews especially fluent

tha's true

Edited by: katija

I don't think a study like the one described can be scientific unless the person counting and characterizing the gestures was ignorant of the ethnicity of the subjects. You'd have to have a computer change their images into silhouettes or sometthing.

I was watching two Italian guys talking on a train the other day and it seened that they made about one gesture per utterance. I was thinking that confirmed the stereotype, but then I watched two Americans talking (not sure of ethnicities; one looked northern European, the other mixed Asian and white) and they also averaged two gestures per utterance.

The plural of repeatedly jab your index finger towards your interlocutor+ is +make a sweeping gesture encompassing the visible world as far as the horizon. Not!. Or, I too doubt the scientific validity of Efron's study.

??????????

So have any SiTters found themselves picking up new gestures along with their foreign-language vocab?

4 I wish I could make a living turning out drivel like that!

thanks