Some of you, by now, have discovered that I live in Israel, and I can tell you that if you
don't use hand gestures when talking here, you'll NEVER be 'heard' or understood! The good news is, if you feel comfortable using your hands while talking, you can usually be understood even
without speaking either Hebrew or Arabic (or Russian or Yiddish or Hungarian or German or Farsi or French or Ladino or Spanish or Portuguese or Italian or Japanese or Afrikaans or Hindi or any number of other languages or dialects...)!
But the
BEST one, by far, is the same as that Italian one - except you basically put all your fingers and thumb together and shake it at the other person - usually when driving, you do this out the window to indicate that you want the other person to stop and let you do some incredibly stupid thing like park extremely crooked on the sidewalk (or pavement, depending on your own brand of English) or back up for three blocks or back down the one way street so you are headed in the proper direction even if the car is moving in the wrong direction or you want to turn into a street or parking spot that three or four others are already waiting for.... I think you get the point by now! Oh, and while you are shaking your hand in this configuration, you MUST, at the same time, shout in a loud and basically obnoxious voice, "rega, rega, rega" - at least three times just to make sure everyone for three or four blocks around has heard you... oh, it means 'wait' or 'moment' (as in 'just a moment') or any number of similar instructions!
There is one more that I have found extremely useful here - and it can be used all over the Middle East and probably in most of the other Mediterranean countries as well. When someone asks you a question that you don't know or simply don't want to answer, just do this: shrug your shoulders with your arms half extended and your palms up (in a sort of helpless gesture) and make a facial expression by pursing your lips, slightly closing your eyes, tilt your head slightly to one side and then, while in this form, make a slight smacking noise with your mouth... and then just turn and walk away...works every time!
