I’ve watched the Inglourious Basterds movie. In the bar scene the English spy is ordering three beers and held his three fingers up and by this giving himself away.
Is it true in the real life? When the natives count on fingers do they start from the thumb?
I don't have hard evidence like studies for you, only personal experience (eastern Germany): Yes, we do start counting from the thumb. My kids and their friends in Kindergarten do it that way, my colleagues do, my friends and family count like that aswell. In fact my older daughter (5yo) was only today experimenting to count in different ways, and in the end dismissed all the "wrong" ways. I don't know any Germans who don't count like that. My wife, who is a teacher, says she has seen russian migrant kids counting from the index finger, but no Germans either.
The scene in the movie is plausible.
Edit based on the comments: Maybe as a rule of thumb, keeping down only the pinky (on its side of the hand) feels awkward and will be avoided by first prioritizing the thumb (until 3) and then switching thumb for pinky (at 4). Signaling "one" might be done with the index finger if the thumb is not unambigious enough("thumbs up"), but counting will start at the thumb, so there probably should be made a clear distinction between counting and signaling. When counting, the pinky-thumb switch is not done by everybody, as a non representative survey among a couple of locals who happened to be at hand showed just now.
Counting/Iterating
Signaling
(The ASCII art is supposed to be right hands when looking at their backs, no offense to lefties implied!)
Always order 5 beers! Could save your life ...
When ordering beers, Germans use this, everything else feels weird :-)
When counting 1 to 5 or 1 to 10, start at the thumb and add more fingers, then start at the thumb of the second hand.
So yeah, the English spy skipped some classes in spy school.
People using the thumb for combinations 1, 2 or 4 would draw attention, too, that's more like school kids would hold their fingers.
Think I saw old people do the two finger pistol when ordering, so maybe for young ones the victory sign is probably cooler.
I don't think the region matter in this case. We learn these things in childhood. From teachers, parents, sibling. Some are more comfortable using thumb and index finger than (index,middle) finger. I'm from india. Most people around me use this
So thumb only comes into play when you want to show number 5. But still i saw many people from my town using thumb for pointing out 2 and 3. So it depends on people around us, everything we learned until now is imitation.
Now this post encouraged me to use different combination of fingers to count or show. Hope i would not be embarrassed pointing out wrong combination.
Keep counting!
Non-verbal communication with hands is very culturally dependend. It is not as similar as smiling. We ran studies between Chinese and western cultures and the differences are huge in certain areas. Funny example is always the "okay" sign of divers (putting index and thumb together) which means in the Arabian culture a..h... . A quick link for you about counting in different cultures http://news.discovery.com/adventure/how-to-count-with-your-fingers-in-different-languages.htm
I live in Dresden, former east Germany, and here, as well as in Berlin, you count as follows: 1~thumb, 2~thumb+index, 3~thumb+index +ring finger,4~all 4 no thumb, and 5 with all five fingers. I have never seen here any German who would start counting with his index finger.
