11 Hand Gestures Every English Learner Should Know How to Communicate

What hand gestures do you use to communicate to your friends, and how do you describe them in English?

This is a very important part of not just the English language, but also the fabric of cross-cultural communication, and today we are going to teach you exactly how to talk about it with 11 common hand gestures in English.

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 Transcript

Aww yeah, welcome to another episode of RealLife TV.

Today I’m going to teach you 11 hand gestures, so stay tuned.

Intro

1. Wave

Ok, so the first gesture that we have is the simple to wave. You can wave goodbye to somebody, you can wave hello.

This is very common when you see somebody.

2. Thumbs Up / 3. Two Thumbs Up

Thumbs up, to put your thumb up like this. Two thumbs up, a lot of times.

4. Clap

You can also clap. It’s when you applause somebody, you applause a show, for example.

5. High Five

Another thing you can do is when you give a high five, is when you put your hand up in the air. Let’s try this: high five.

6. Pounders

Ok. Another thing we can do is what we call pounders. When you take your fist like this, this is pretty simple. That’s a pounder.

7. Handshake

And we have a simple handshake. It’s a handshake, thank you very much.

8. Flip Someone Off

Ok, now another one we can do, it’s a little bit offensive, so, if you get offended really easily, you might want to turn this off right now. But just so you know how to express yourself when you’re talking about this, this is actually when the middle finger goes up, the middle finger, this is to flip somebody off.

So, I’m going to do an example here.

9. Pumping One’s Fist

So, he’s pumping his fist, now. When you pump your fist in anger…

10. The Peace Sign

But if that happens to you, you might want to go peace. Chill out, man, peace.

11. Namaste (Na-mas-té)

And then the final expression is namaste. Namaste is when you bow to that divine quality in the other person, it’s a deep gesture of peace.

Note: The pronunciation in the video was incorrect. It should be “na-mas-té” with a stress on the final “te”

Ok, there you have it. So, those are 11 hand gestures that you can use in English.

Of course, it’s cross-cultural, it’s important to understand the people you’re talking to, people you’re communicating with, but those are some gesturesthat, at least in the United States and Australia, those work out just fine.

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Thank you very much, take care!

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