Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Communicating like a Nica


When I was home over Christmas, I shared with my family the Nicaraguan custom to point with chin and lips (not your hand or finger) when you want to point out a location. So, for about two weeks we walked around the house puckering up our lips and laughing. With this in mind, I share with you how to communicate like a true Nicaraguan.

· When you want someone to repeat what they said or you don’t understand: Squint or scrunch up your nose.

· When you want to say hello to someone across the street: Extend your arm parallel to the ground at waist level. Put your palm up and extend your neck so your chin points up.

· When you want to say someone is stingy or cheap: Flex your bicep and tap the bottom of your elbow with your opposite hand.

· When you are talking about money: Extend your pointer fingers and slide one across the other as if you were peeling a carrot.

· When you want to say no: Extend your pointer finger and aggressively wag your hand back and forth.

· When you want to say someone has a lot of money: Extend your pointer finger and thumb and hold them out in front of you so that they form an invisible outline of a giant stack of money.

· When you are talking about drinking beer or rum: Extend your thumb and pinky finger (the hang loose sign) and hold your thumb at your mouth. Move your hand up and down as if drinking from a glass.

· When you want to say something is crowded or full: Touch all fingers and thumb together on one hand.

· When you want to eat or are talking about eating: Hold your palm in front of your mouth, fingers together. Snap your fingers back and forth near your mouth.

· When you want to refer to your diarrhea: Make a fist and lock your elbow into the side of your body. Move the lower part of your arm up and down while grimacing.

· When you want to point to something: Pucker up your lips and aim where you want to point (also works to jokingly indicate that your friend is crazy when he’s telling a dumb story).

· When you want to get someone to come towards you: Extend your arm in front of your body and move your wrist up and down with your fingers pointed towards the ground.

7 comments:

  1. Fabulous. Great stuff as ever

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dave, that was fab. May I post this along with a link back on my web site jinoteg.com?

    I have seen too many Good Things on the web that 5 minutes later they have vanished.

    Tony X Robins

    ReplyDelete
  3. When you want to indicate fear or something scary put you fingers together, like the full sign, then open and close them a little bit a couple times.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Dave,

    You've got a good eye for noticing this. I tried to make a list while I lived in Granada and its a great ice breaker in any situation. I'd like to add some of the ones you mentioned to my list.

    Andreas

    http://www.caritafeliz.org/bodylanguage.htm
    (the formatting is a bit wonky, but you get the gist).

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've read your blog and this post made me laugh so hard that I couldn't help posting a reference to it in my blog http://yahoradeque.blogspot.com/2010/09/lenguaje-corporal-nica.html I really enjoyed all the things you wrote about my country and can't thank you enough about doing it. Really, thanks

    ReplyDelete
  6. I ended up here thanks to a post on Nimrod's blog, I can tell you I felt totally identified with everything you wrote, it made laugh a lot. Also reminded me about a book by Mr. Carlos Mántica, where some of our quirks are described. It's good to see it from a foreigner point of view though, I never though it was so evident.

    Great blog, I plan on reading everything!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks for the kind words and publicity, Nimrod! I'll have to check out that book that Xochitl mentions. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete