Italian Hand Gestures

Around the little kitchen table after 11pm as we enjoyed Pietro’s dry over-baked cookies with a glass of milk, my Italian family finally let me in on some of the secrets to their language. Specifically, Italian body language.

Just moments before, I had learned that Francesco had never tried a donut before in his life. Tragic. When Maria entered the conversation and asked, “What’s a donut?” I about lost it. Maddi and Pietro soon entered the kitchen and I was relieved to hear that Pietro liked donuts. Somehow donuts and comparing foods and cultures brought us to the topic of hand gestures.

For pretty much every example, they used Carlo. Why does Carlo come to mind so easily when demonstrating Italian gestures? Well, read their meanings and you tell me.

“What??!” : the gesture most Americans recognize. I learned that this gesture is not only used to express anger, but also just strong emotion. The equivalent might be Hyrum saying “What the!!!”

I assumed that it was an angry gesture because this signal was one of my first encounters with the Italian language when I first landed in Milan. As I sat on my suitcase waiting for the bus in the airport to arrive, I watched- or rather first heard- an angry woman storm across the road, yelling at her trailing husband at full volume. I had no clue what she was saying other than a few phrases telling him that she didn’t care and to leave her alone and to stop it. Apparently they had to wait for the same bus as me, but she couldn’t stand to be near him, so in big circles they walked around the bus stop. All the while he trying to calm her down, and she violently waving around that passionate hand gesture.

But it’s more than a display of anger. The Italian closed hand can be used to ask a question when you don’t understand what someone means or did, or can be used to emphasis a point.

“Let’s go/Time to go/Finish this”: hitting the side of one hand sign palm OR scissor cutting finger

“I don’t care”: flicking out from under the chin and swooping motion forward

“Are you crazy?!”: waving rigid open hand in front of forehead side to side rapidly. A gesture I could have used to react when I found out that they had never tried donuts.

“Stop! Enough!”: swift, firm open palm facing ground raised to chest height

“Make it short/ wrap it up”: opening and closing fist quickly, turned upward

“Go away”: flicking/pointing across body

I also learned a couple other more vulgar gestures, but I’ll refrain from sharing them here. Be assured that there are many ways to express strong emotions in this country. Sometimes I will overhear a conversation that sounds like world war three has begun in the living room, only to learn that the topic of conversation was one that all parties generally agreed on.

Come to think of it, it’s not too different from how my siblings communicate, just with some extra hand motions.

I’ve learned that our dear sweet little Carlo has a swearing problem. The thing is… I don’t know Italian swear words. And I told them not to teach me. So I never know when a kid says a distasteful word. But now when Carlo says something with a smirk on his face and the whole family either gasps or instantly launches on him, I know that something naughty must have slipped out. In this instance, I am willfully choosing ignorance because ignorance is bliss. But I am getting better at picking up context clues so that I know when to give Carlo a mindful, “Let’s use nice words.”

The good news is that Carlo is also a little behind in reading. Why is that good news for me? Because I love listening to Carlo read! So I’ll make sure he gets lots of reading practice this summer. Win win.