Friday, March 9, 2012

A little cultural oddity

Growing up in a church that used the King James Version there were many an archaic phrase that my young mind struggled to understand.

One in particular came to my mind the other day upon observing a cultural oddity here in Honduras. The verse is Psalm 22:7.
All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip...
 That phrase "shoot out the lip" always struck me as odd.

I was thinking about this the other day because Hondurans point with their lips. I'm sure that sounds strange but they do, even in the middle of a sentence. In the case in question, a sales lady at an electronics store indicated a stack of inkjet printers in answer to a customer's question by "shoot(ing) out the lip" while speaking. It's the sort of thing that is kind of hard to imagine until you see it.

No, it doesn't have anything to do with Psalm 22, and no, I don't intend to take up the practice.

2 comments:

  1. Lip pointing makes life fun here! But yes, it's probably not a good thing to imitate.

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  2. You don´t intend to, but you will. It creeped into our lives and it's actually quite usefull if you need to point at something and your hands are full. :)

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