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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

I went to high school in Japan for a year. Something that tripped me up for a while is the gesture for "come here". It's equivalent to the English gesture for "go away". (Try gesturing "go away" like you're shooing a bug away and "come here" like you want to tell someone a secret. Your hand flips 180 degrees, but it's basically the same gesture.)

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My Indian coworkers shake their head side to side for yes and no. When I first starting working with them I was always a little mad that they never agreed with me until I realized what was going on.

You can tell if it's yes or no depending on speed but thanks to covid WFH for months I've forgotten which is which. Going back to the office is going to be an adjustment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj56IPJOqWE

There are something like four distinct head-waggle motions with different meanings.

It may also be a bit confusing to many people as Indians tend to gently wobble their head when someone is talking to show that they're listening. I believe it's a sign of respect.

The gestures are similar but are different. The Japanese version is typically performed with the arm in an upraised angle and is a quick repeated wave. For a go away gesture the arm is parallel to the ground

Sounds similar to the gesture for "come here" in Turkey and other Turkic countries. Which is interesting, given the putative shared origin of Japanese and Turkic languages (although the hypothesized membership of Japanese in an Altaic language superfamily is still very controversial).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altaic_languages#Korean_and_Ja...

Does the atom of the movement change as well, or just the orientation of the hand/arm?

(I would make the "come here" gesture with my hand starting closer to the person and moving towards me, and the "go away" gesture in reverse, although it might be difficult to tell because the motion would be repeated and confounded with moving my hand/arm into place in either case.)

Not exactly sure what tripped you up. The palm is facing downwards, but the hand motion is opposite and easy to tell even if you're a foreigner. Source: am foreigner living in Japan

I've had a few confusing moments with train conductors shooing me off a train, but actually telling me to hurry up and get on.

What do they actually look like? I'm struggling to understand what two gestures are 180 degrees to each other.

As further warning, the Western fingers up "come here" gesture has an offensive connotation to the Japanese.

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