Finger counting gives away your nationality
1–10 of 160 posts
Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality
#2This is bunk. I’m Portuguese and I start by joining the thumb with my pinky, brush it through the other fingers, then raise my thumb as “5”. Nobody I know does that, it’s a personal trait.
Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality
#3Drinking outside a bar in Paris (so table service) with my girlfriend, the glasses approach empty so I turn to catch the barman's eye. He flicks the Vs (I am culturally sensitive so not offended, he means "two more pints?"), I return the thumbs-up. He brings one pint.
Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality
#4This can be fatal - as shown in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds...
Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality
#5There's a distinction to be made between counting on one's fingers and communicating a number with one's fingers.
You can easily communicate numbers 1 through 10 to just about anyone around the globe by holding up the corresponding number of fingers. But when it comes to 11 and up, you're generally not going to be able to communicate those numbers in a universally recognizable way. (Although "flashing" one's hands to represent intervals of ten is somewhat well understood.)
On the other hand, it's possible to use your fingers to count to numbers higher than 10, using whatever system appeals to you, regardless of whether others can understand it. The article talks about using the segments between each knuckle.
There's even a further distinction to be made here, though, between using your fingers to count and using your fingers to maintain state. You might, for instance, be able to easily use knuckle segments to count. But to maintain state, you need to make some movement with your fingers (e.g. bending a knuckle) with each transition period and then hold that new position for some period of time. And that can be hard to do with many finger positions.
Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality
#6Got 3 beers in Germany when I wanted 2 many, many, times before I learned.
Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality
#7The correct way is to count in binary, and easily reach 1023 without needing a third hand [0].
Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality
#8Got 3 beers in Germany when I wanted 2 many, many, times before I learned.
You've piqued my curiosity; what did you think meant 2 that they thought meant 3?
Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality
#9I like what I got to know as "the Japanese way" to count to 144 on my fingers. I´m sure it´s not exclusive to Japan tho.
Using thumb as a pointer, I count not on the fingers, but their segments. Each finger is 3 segments, which gives 12 per hand. Now, to boost it, one hand is used to count the dozens from the other hand.
Gets me thinking, maybe this is one of the reasons for popularity of 12-based systems in ancient times? Did our ancestors just use their counting fingers better?
Re: Finger counting gives away your nationality
#10Reminds me of that scene in Inglorious Basterds where the spies are outed because of this.