Counting Differences on One Hand: Numerical hand gestures across cultures

Posted by Alex on March 11, 2010 under History, Language Study | 2 Comments to Read

Spoiler Alert! In our prolonged Oscar fever, this post is inspired by another 2009 Best Picture Nominee, Inglorious Bastards. If you haven’t seen the film, and would like to, please be advised that plot elements are contained below.

In Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 WWII hit Inglorious Bastards, one of Lt. Aldo Raine’s soldiers is impersonating a German soldier successfully at a bar with his excellent command of the language, that is, until he raises his hand to order glasses. His words are perfect German; his hand gesture, however, is not, and gives away his cover to a German officer.

As researcher Elena Nicoladis of the University of Alberta has recently confirmed, the way people count on their hands can in fact be a powerful tool in discovering their country of origin – while Americans (and many other nationalities) use their index, middle, and ring fingers to express ‘3,’ someone from Germany or France would use their thumb and their index and middle fingers. This is not new information; Nicoladis herself states: “It’s well known in Denmark, if you go to Germany and you order two beers, you get three,” referring to the known difference in hand gestures. It was for Nicoladis, however, a starting point for examining cultural influences on language acquisition.

In Inglorious Bastards, the American’s slip of hand speaks to the film’s larger theme of identity, and a fundamental inability to hide who you really are. Nicoladis’ studies suggest the same, that cultural norms, such as gestures, are learned before language and deeply engrained, and difficult to change.