The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)
1–10 of 48 posts
Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)
#2In 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):
Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)
#3I 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)
Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)
#4I 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 uncan…
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
Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)
#5I 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.
Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)
#6now I am interested in the vulgar ones
Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)
#7I 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 i…
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.
Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)
#8I 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 i…
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.
Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)
#9now I am interested in the vulgar ones
Il gesto dell'ombrello :D
Re: The fine art of Italian hand gestures: A vintage visual dictionary (2012)
#10I'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".