8 ms·

The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)

124 points by manchoz 4y ago

jaclaz 4y ago
In 2010 a newer dictionary of gestures was made, the Author (Fabio Caon) also made a set of videos of the gestures (there was a DVD attached to this new dictionary), and published them as videos on youtube, links on his page here (Italian): https://www.itals.it/gesti-degli-italiani https://www.itals.it/gesti-degli-italiani
- klez 4y ago
  I have that book. Caon was my SO's thesis advisor. The interesting part about that book is that it also points out whether the gesture has a different meaning in other cultures. For example it says the gesture for "OK" that you do by making a circle with your thumb and index finger has a vulgar meaning in Russia (iirc).
  - boredemployee 4y ago
    in some latin america countries as well
    - Izikiel43 4y ago
      Brasil only afaik.
sph 4y ago
I had some hard time deciphering the gesture from still images, but I have to say it's pretty accurate and I am surprised by how I am used to using them when I speak Italian, and how I unconsciously avoid them when speaking English. I never thought about it. Now that I live abroad, I wonder if I'm slowly losing that "body language", and making myself harder to understand to other Italian speakers, entering some uncanny valley where I sound fluent, but something's missing. As a trilingual person, this is certainly would not be the first time. (The first language I've learned was French, I have perfect pronunciation but I've never practiced it and it became very rusty over the years, so it's now in that uncanny limbo and I actively avoid speaking it)
- bujak300 4y ago
  The unconscious component is crazy, my otalian SO was trying to teach me to do some of the gestures correctly but she was not able to execute the gestures consciously, only in the flow of speech
  - sneak 4y ago
    Subconscious. Unconscious gestures would not be very interesting as they're mostly just snoring. (I am aware we already lost this battle with the now-canonized-as-professional-jargon misnomer term "unconscious bias".)
  - strongpigeon 4y ago
    Reminds me of “The Centipede’s Dilemma”: A centipede was happy – quite! Until a toad in fun Said, "Pray, which leg moves after which?" This raised her doubts to such a pitch, She fell exhausted in the ditch Not knowing how to run.
bogomipz 4y ago
I see the book's publication is from 1958 and much of the imagery suggests a bygone era. Are all or most of these still in use today? It's amusing to note that the first picture has in the middle of the last row, the now ubiquitous "Heavy Metal horns." I remember reading an old interview with Ronnie James Dio, who was Italian, where he said he picked up the gesture from his Grandmother. It's widely accepted that he is responsible for introducing this gesture into modern popular culture, non-Italian anyways. Some have pinpointed he started using this on stage in late 70's during his time in Black Sabbath.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  from a quick look at the first image of "Napolitan gestures" at least money, stealing and wait a moment are still largely in use. Horn sign that legend says RJ Dio introduced by simply flipping the way his grandmother did the gesture (we do it palm facing the floor, the metal one is palm facing the face) it's still very popular as a scaramantic gesture against bad luck.
  - riffraff 4y ago
    Upwards and palm facing outwards was also common as an insult, but "cornuto" has become obsolete as am offense. We don't even say it to football referees anymore!
    - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
      yep. OP asked "Are all or most of these still in use today?" and I haven't heard "cornuto" in a long time. It's been largely replaced (IMO) by the internationally acclaimed middle finger gesture.
- LtWorf 4y ago
  The bottom ones scanned from the book, I know and I've used or seen them used. The initial ones, I had never seen some of them.
- jaclaz 4y ago
brainzap 4y ago
now I am interested in the vulgar ones
- LtWorf 4y ago
  Il gesto dell'ombrello :D https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesto_dell%27ombrello https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesto_dell%27ombrello
  - paganel 4y ago
    Albertone in a thread about Italian hand-gestures, there's nothing more Italian than this. Now, all that is missing is some link to a ragionier Fantozzi sketch.
    - LtWorf 4y ago
      Tipo questo? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJz5p5zrSP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJz5p5zrSP4
      - klez 4y ago
        While we're at it, the woman in the clip is Liù Bosisio. Beside interpreting Fantozzi's wife in many movies of the series, she did Marge's voice in the Italian version of The Simpsons before being replaced after season 22.
- klez 4y ago
  For example: https://youtu.be/wEhLURFsfSg?t=222 https://youtu.be/wEhLURFsfSg?t=222 which literally means "suck my dick", but used in a discourse is more akin to a response you give when someone asks you to do something there's no way you're going to do. Also: https://youtu.be/wEhLURFsfSg?t=526 https://youtu.be/wEhLURFsfSg?t=526 meaning "fucking".
chromerift 4y ago
I'm not Italian, but Argentinian and it's funny how we have most of these, though some of the definitions are slightly weird to me, for example, the one on the cover means "what", back tips of the fingers on the chin means "I don't know". There's also a very interesting one we have, idk where it comes from, where one closes the fingers and bends the thumb a couple of times, sometimes accompanied by saying "minga", which means something like "jaja, no way, not doing that".
- prionassembly 4y ago
  > back tips of the fingers over the chin Yes, but the "no me importa" gesture sweeps over the chin.
  - chromerift 4y ago
    Mine too, forgot to mention. Also it could mean don't know + don't care depending on the facial expression, but I've not seen it as just don't care.
riccardomc 4y ago
It's worth noting is available in a multi-language edition[1]. In Italian weddings is customary to give a "bomboniera" to guests, a small party favour as a souvenir and thanks for their attendance. Usually it consists of some formal bullshit like a silver spoon or small ceramic thing. My wife and I wanted something a bit more fun and Munari's "supplemento al dizionario italiano" become ours. [1]https://www.amazon.it/italiano-Supplement-dictionary-Supplement-dictionnaire-italien-Anhang-italienischen/dp/8886250916 https://www.amazon.it/italiano-Supplement-dictionary-Supplem...
agentwiggles 4y ago
Every time I rewatch the Sopranos, the "non me ne importa" gesture gets into my vocabulary for a while. (I think of it more as the "vaffanculo" gesture though, as it almost always accompanies this phrase in the show). It has this wonderful quality of vulgar, spiteful dismissal that we don't have a good expression for in English - although the somewhat common "jerk off" gesture is similar in intent, that one is pretty nsfw.
- guythedudebro 4y ago
  The fuck you want, a boutonniere?
  - agentwiggles 4y ago
    He hangs around /r/thesopranos for 15 minutes and it's "fuckin this" and "fuckin that"!
- raceling 4y ago
  > Every time I rewatch the Sopranos Those are Americans, not Italians.
  - wszfahwbwbaha 4y ago
    thanks we didn't know
  - znpy 4y ago
    I wish I could upvote you twice.
  - agentwiggles 4y ago
    Thanks for the clarification, I hadn't realized. Was it their command of English that tipped you off, or the New Jersey scenery in the intro sequence? The hand gesture in question appears to be common to both "real" Italians and Italian-Americans as depicted in the show. Not sure what your point is.
ceritium 4y ago
The book on Archive: https://archive.org/details/speakitalianfine0000muna/ https://archive.org/details/speakitalianfine0000muna/
m33k44 4y ago
Okay, I need to include this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZorPpz8_EM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZorPpz8_EM It is a comedy, please don't be offended :)
prionassembly 4y ago
> Wittgenstein was insisting that a proposition and what it describes must have the same 'logical form', the same 'logical multiplicity'. Sraffa made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans as meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the underneath of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger-tips of one hand. And he asked: 'What is the logical form of that?' > In the introduction to Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein mentions discussions with Sraffa over many years and says: "I am indebted to this stimulus for the most consequential ideas in this book". Wittgenstein wrote two major books, the second of which basically undoes everything the first did. In the middle of that is Sraffa, presumably triggering a crisis of faith. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Sraffa#Personal_connections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Sraffa#Personal_connecti...
gitowiec 4y ago
I didn't know that all these gestures are Italian. People around me and myself are used to use them despite we are not Italian
jackallis 4y ago
someone should write a book about Indian hand and head gestures.
js2 4y ago
A demonstration by Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato in Lina Wertmüller's The Seduction of Mimi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mx407UflJQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mx407UflJQ
- sigil 4y ago
  Wonderful, thanks for that. Wertmüller's “Swept Away” (also starring Giannini and Melato) is one of my favorite films. Wonder how much hand dialog I’ve been missing!
  - js2 4y ago
    The clip is from a longer 4 minute scene with no dialog set to the prelude to Verdi's La Traviata (had to look it up...). All body language. The full movie is on YouTube and the extended scene starts at 34:20: https://youtu.be/Xo9uf8Q8Pc4?t=2060 https://youtu.be/Xo9uf8Q8Pc4?t=2060 (You could argue the scene starts even earlier, at 23 minutes in.) I've seen three of Wertmüller's films. Mimi, Swept Away, and Seven Beauties. Of those, I enjoyed Mimi the most, but they were all worth seeing.
mprovost 4y ago
This made the rounds last summer during the Euros with the Italian sports journalist Tancredi Palmeri tweeting "Stop with this stereotype about Italians doing hand gestures. It's not t": https://twitter.com/bettinghub/status/1415779102460715009 https://twitter.com/bettinghub/status/1415779102460715009 (the original video has been deleted)
twic 4y ago
A friend of mine from somewhere around Como has a gesture where she taps her upper arm with her index finger while making a theatrical pained expression. I have no idea what it represents or means. She usually does it while reacting to something she doesn't like, perhaps particularly being asked to go along with someone else's suggestion which she thinks will be arduous. It vaguely suggests someone shooting up heroin, but i'm not sure why that would be relevant. I have not asked her about it. I think i prefer the mystery.
- butokai 4y ago
  I tend to use with a meaning more nuanced towards "boring". What's going to happen is so extremely boring, that I'd better be sedated, high on drugs or the like in order to withstand it. I can see how the "drug" thing might shift the meaning to be: you must be high on drugs in order to suggest something this arduous.
  - twic 4y ago
    That makes perfect sense, thank you!
- tacone 4y ago
  It's actually tapping with two fingers on the veins of the upper harm. It means what's going on is so tedious that she'd prefer to get a jab to escape from it.

124 points by manchoz 4y ago

In 2010 a newer dictionary of gestures was made, the Author (Fabio Caon) also made a set of videos of the gestures (there was a DVD attached to this new dictionary), and published them as videos on youtube, links on his page here (Italian): https://www.itals.it/gesti-degli-italiani https://www.itals.it/gesti-degli-italiani

klez 4y ago
I have that book. Caon was my SO's thesis advisor. The interesting part about that book is that it also points out whether the gesture has a different meaning in other cultures. For example it says the gesture for "OK" that you do by making a circle with your thumb and index finger has a vulgar meaning in Russia (iirc).
- boredemployee 4y ago
  in some latin america countries as well
  - Izikiel43 4y ago
    Brasil only afaik.

sph 4y ago

I had some hard time deciphering the gesture from still images, but I have to say it's pretty accurate and I am surprised by how I am used to using them when I speak Italian, and how I unconsciously avoid them when speaking English. I never thought about it. Now that I live abroad, I wonder if I'm slowly losing that "body language", and making myself harder to understand to other Italian speakers, entering some uncanny valley where I sound fluent, but something's missing. As a trilingual person, this is certainly would not be the first time. (The first language I've learned was French, I have perfect pronunciation but I've never practiced it and it became very rusty over the years, so it's now in that uncanny limbo and I actively avoid speaking it)

bujak300 4y ago
The unconscious component is crazy, my otalian SO was trying to teach me to do some of the gestures correctly but she was not able to execute the gestures consciously, only in the flow of speech
- sneak 4y ago
  Subconscious. Unconscious gestures would not be very interesting as they're mostly just snoring. (I am aware we already lost this battle with the now-canonized-as-professional-jargon misnomer term "unconscious bias".)
- strongpigeon 4y ago
  Reminds me of “The Centipede’s Dilemma”: A centipede was happy – quite! Until a toad in fun Said, "Pray, which leg moves after which?" This raised her doubts to such a pitch, She fell exhausted in the ditch Not knowing how to run.

bogomipz 4y ago

I see the book's publication is from 1958 and much of the imagery suggests a bygone era. Are all or most of these still in use today? It's amusing to note that the first picture has in the middle of the last row, the now ubiquitous "Heavy Metal horns." I remember reading an old interview with Ronnie James Dio, who was Italian, where he said he picked up the gesture from his Grandmother. It's widely accepted that he is responsible for introducing this gesture into modern popular culture, non-Italian anyways. Some have pinpointed he started using this on stage in late 70's during his time in Black Sabbath.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
from a quick look at the first image of "Napolitan gestures" at least money, stealing and wait a moment are still largely in use. Horn sign that legend says RJ Dio introduced by simply flipping the way his grandmother did the gesture (we do it palm facing the floor, the metal one is palm facing the face) it's still very popular as a scaramantic gesture against bad luck.
- riffraff 4y ago
  Upwards and palm facing outwards was also common as an insult, but "cornuto" has become obsolete as am offense. We don't even say it to football referees anymore!
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    yep. OP asked "Are all or most of these still in use today?" and I haven't heard "cornuto" in a long time. It's been largely replaced (IMO) by the internationally acclaimed middle finger gesture.
LtWorf 4y ago
The bottom ones scanned from the book, I know and I've used or seen them used. The initial ones, I had never seen some of them.
jaclaz 4y ago

brainzap 4y ago

now I am interested in the vulgar ones

LtWorf 4y ago
Il gesto dell'ombrello :D https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesto_dell%27ombrello https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesto_dell%27ombrello
- paganel 4y ago
  Albertone in a thread about Italian hand-gestures, there's nothing more Italian than this. Now, all that is missing is some link to a ragionier Fantozzi sketch.
  - LtWorf 4y ago
    Tipo questo? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJz5p5zrSP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJz5p5zrSP4
    - klez 4y ago
      While we're at it, the woman in the clip is Liù Bosisio. Beside interpreting Fantozzi's wife in many movies of the series, she did Marge's voice in the Italian version of The Simpsons before being replaced after season 22.
klez 4y ago
For example: https://youtu.be/wEhLURFsfSg?t=222 https://youtu.be/wEhLURFsfSg?t=222 which literally means "suck my dick", but used in a discourse is more akin to a response you give when someone asks you to do something there's no way you're going to do. Also: https://youtu.be/wEhLURFsfSg?t=526 https://youtu.be/wEhLURFsfSg?t=526 meaning "fucking".

chromerift 4y ago

I'm not Italian, but Argentinian and it's funny how we have most of these, though some of the definitions are slightly weird to me, for example, the one on the cover means "what", back tips of the fingers on the chin means "I don't know". There's also a very interesting one we have, idk where it comes from, where one closes the fingers and bends the thumb a couple of times, sometimes accompanied by saying "minga", which means something like "jaja, no way, not doing that".

prionassembly 4y ago
> back tips of the fingers over the chin Yes, but the "no me importa" gesture sweeps over the chin.
- chromerift 4y ago
  Mine too, forgot to mention. Also it could mean don't know + don't care depending on the facial expression, but I've not seen it as just don't care.

riccardomc 4y ago

It's worth noting is available in a multi-language edition[1]. In Italian weddings is customary to give a "bomboniera" to guests, a small party favour as a souvenir and thanks for their attendance. Usually it consists of some formal bullshit like a silver spoon or small ceramic thing. My wife and I wanted something a bit more fun and Munari's "supplemento al dizionario italiano" become ours. [1]https://www.amazon.it/italiano-Supplement-dictionary-Supplement-dictionnaire-italien-Anhang-italienischen/dp/8886250916 https://www.amazon.it/italiano-Supplement-dictionary-Supplem...

agentwiggles 4y ago

Every time I rewatch the Sopranos, the "non me ne importa" gesture gets into my vocabulary for a while. (I think of it more as the "vaffanculo" gesture though, as it almost always accompanies this phrase in the show). It has this wonderful quality of vulgar, spiteful dismissal that we don't have a good expression for in English - although the somewhat common "jerk off" gesture is similar in intent, that one is pretty nsfw.

guythedudebro 4y ago
The fuck you want, a boutonniere?
- agentwiggles 4y ago
  He hangs around /r/thesopranos for 15 minutes and it's "fuckin this" and "fuckin that"!
raceling 4y ago
> Every time I rewatch the Sopranos Those are Americans, not Italians.
- wszfahwbwbaha 4y ago
  thanks we didn't know
- znpy 4y ago
  I wish I could upvote you twice.
- agentwiggles 4y ago
  Thanks for the clarification, I hadn't realized. Was it their command of English that tipped you off, or the New Jersey scenery in the intro sequence? The hand gesture in question appears to be common to both "real" Italians and Italian-Americans as depicted in the show. Not sure what your point is.

ceritium 4y ago

The book on Archive: https://archive.org/details/speakitalianfine0000muna/ https://archive.org/details/speakitalianfine0000muna/

m33k44 4y ago

Okay, I need to include this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZorPpz8_EM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZorPpz8_EM It is a comedy, please don't be offended :)

prionassembly 4y ago

> Wittgenstein was insisting that a proposition and what it describes must have the same 'logical form', the same 'logical multiplicity'. Sraffa made a gesture, familiar to Neapolitans as meaning something like disgust or contempt, of brushing the underneath of his chin with an outward sweep of the finger-tips of one hand. And he asked: 'What is the logical form of that?' > In the introduction to Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein mentions discussions with Sraffa over many years and says: "I am indebted to this stimulus for the most consequential ideas in this book". Wittgenstein wrote two major books, the second of which basically undoes everything the first did. In the middle of that is Sraffa, presumably triggering a crisis of faith. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Sraffa#Personal_connections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Sraffa#Personal_connecti...

gitowiec 4y ago

I didn't know that all these gestures are Italian. People around me and myself are used to use them despite we are not Italian

jackallis 4y ago

someone should write a book about Indian hand and head gestures.

js2 4y ago

A demonstration by Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato in Lina Wertmüller's The Seduction of Mimi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mx407UflJQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mx407UflJQ

sigil 4y ago
Wonderful, thanks for that. Wertmüller's “Swept Away” (also starring Giannini and Melato) is one of my favorite films. Wonder how much hand dialog I’ve been missing!
- js2 4y ago
  The clip is from a longer 4 minute scene with no dialog set to the prelude to Verdi's La Traviata (had to look it up...). All body language. The full movie is on YouTube and the extended scene starts at 34:20: https://youtu.be/Xo9uf8Q8Pc4?t=2060 https://youtu.be/Xo9uf8Q8Pc4?t=2060 (You could argue the scene starts even earlier, at 23 minutes in.) I've seen three of Wertmüller's films. Mimi, Swept Away, and Seven Beauties. Of those, I enjoyed Mimi the most, but they were all worth seeing.

mprovost 4y ago

This made the rounds last summer during the Euros with the Italian sports journalist Tancredi Palmeri tweeting "Stop with this stereotype about Italians doing hand gestures. It's not t": https://twitter.com/bettinghub/status/1415779102460715009 https://twitter.com/bettinghub/status/1415779102460715009 (the original video has been deleted)

twic 4y ago

A friend of mine from somewhere around Como has a gesture where she taps her upper arm with her index finger while making a theatrical pained expression. I have no idea what it represents or means. She usually does it while reacting to something she doesn't like, perhaps particularly being asked to go along with someone else's suggestion which she thinks will be arduous. It vaguely suggests someone shooting up heroin, but i'm not sure why that would be relevant. I have not asked her about it. I think i prefer the mystery.

butokai 4y ago
I tend to use with a meaning more nuanced towards "boring". What's going to happen is so extremely boring, that I'd better be sedated, high on drugs or the like in order to withstand it. I can see how the "drug" thing might shift the meaning to be: you must be high on drugs in order to suggest something this arduous.
- twic 4y ago
  That makes perfect sense, thank you!
tacone 4y ago
It's actually tapping with two fingers on the veins of the upper harm. It means what's going on is so tedious that she'd prefer to get a jab to escape from it.