Brazilian Body Language

General Info

I think that in terms of body language, nobody beats the Italians in sheer number of gestures. I have a book with at least 50 different ones, and that doesn't include the obscene category. But Brazilians are not very far behind (try watching Brazilian TV news...they can't talk in Brazil without using their hands!). Our gallery of permitted body language and gestures to avoid has grown over the past year, so we now have a number of different pages.

By the way, I just had an experience in Rio which made me realize how important this page really is. I shared a taxi with a Canadian who was there on business. He was a bit leery of taking taxis because he had seen a taxi driver doing a gesture which he couldn't understand and thought might mean something bad...well, it turned out that the driver had been making the gesture for "full." Check out the pages listed below and be a savvy traveler...

Attention-Getters
Closeness
Disbelief
Eat & Drink
Enthusiastic or Sympathetic
Jealousy
Mildly Insulting and Insulting
Money
Negation
Obscene
Quantity
Speed

Crosscultural Pages