Spanish has five common ways to say that a future event might happen, and I assumed that as in English, each expressed a vague but nonetheless distinct level of probability. [. . .] But in Mexico people seemed to use all five expressions interchangeably. [. . .] If I asked an assistant whether Mr Rodríguez would be back in his office later on, I quickly understood that the the answer "Probablemente sí, señor" could mean anything from "Yes, if he has nothing else to do" to "I have no idea" to "Don't count on it" to "He's in now, but we're not telling you." A request to have Mr Rodríguez call me back would usually elicit a "Cómo no", ie, "How could I not"—a delightful combination of sincerity with lack of commitment.(full article here)
After reading that section, my mind immediately went to the Indian head-wobble. Even after returning to America, I kept right on wobbling -- mostly as a great way to communicate complete, absolute noncommitance to any answer. The right wobble looks like both a 'yes' and a 'no' to an American, which sometimes it actually is.
Meanwhile, this article ("When Normally Doesn't Mean Normally") reminds me of a game of Balderdash played with my co-climbers in the Nepal region. We teamed a bunch of Brits, Aussies, Canadians, Kiwis, and this sole Yankee against each other to "define" various culture-specific words. Expressions like "mind the gap" and "barbie" (for barbeque) were given, and we'd have to try and come up with the "best" definition for each. (It didn't take long for the game to turn terribly obscene, but that's another story.) Afterwards, I was surprised at how often we'd find some of us honestly wouldn't know the meaning of certain words, though we all shared a language. I still, for instance, don't know exactly what an "iced vovo" could be, except that it's edible and involves Grandma. The definition we decided on probably doesn't belong in the dictionary--no matter what country you're from.
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