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)
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
> 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.
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):
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).
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!
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:
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.
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.
Yes, they're still so prevalent in Italy and Italian-descendant cultures that I thought they'd be self-explanatory since they come to me so naturally. The one on the cover of the book for example, is literally just a question mark, with all of the various connotations a question mark might have (even as a single sentence by itself "?"), and is used so often I can't believe other cultures don't have any hand gesture for it nor adopted it.
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.
Not really. You've mentioned you associate the pinched fingers with vaffanculo but it's a "mistranslation" spread by Sopranos, because they're not actually first generation Italians.
The meaning of the pinched fingers is surprised interrogative, like "what?!" Or "wtf?!". Like "what are you doing here?" or "what do you mean?" It is very informal but doesn't imply profanity at all.
Sadly, all foreigners that have seen Sopranos tend to imitate the gesture and saying "vaffanculo!" which is just plain wrong.
I was probably overly snarky. Apologies. I know next to nothing about what hand gestures actual Italians make so I'm willing to admit I'm wrong.
That said, when you say "pinched fingers", it makes me wonder if we're talking about the same gesture. The gesture from TFA labeled "non ne me importa" (English: I don't care) doesn't look like what I think of when I read "pinched fingers". "Pinched fingers" makes me picture the gesture shown on the cover of the book at the top of the article. (This is annoying to try to describe in plain text :) )
The gesture in the article doesn't demonstrate this, but the one I associate with "vaffanculo" (which sounds more like "vafungool" on the Sopranos) is a quick brush off the knuckles on the bottom of the chin outward. From some quick googling it does appear to have a mild offensive "get lost" type of meaning.
I'm actually probably mistakenly confusing it for the non ne me importa gesture, as the one I'm thinking of seems to usually be performed with the thumb out, unlike the one pictured.
Again, apologies for the snark. I'd rather learn something than gain internet dunk points. :)
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.
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".
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":
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
For example: 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.
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)