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

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)

> 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_connecti...

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

A demonstration by Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato in Lina Wertmüller's The Seduction of Mimi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mx407UflJQ

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.

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.

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-Supplem...

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".

Okay, I need to include this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZorPpz8_EM

It is a comedy, please don't be offended :)

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

(the original video has been deleted)

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

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.

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

now I am interested in the vulgar ones

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