Examples Of Italian Hand Gestures

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A lot can be said with no words! Along with Italian, there is a parallel language that the Italians use to communicate: the language of hand gestures. Before coming to Italy I was unaware of the fact that Italians use a lot of hand gestures while communicating. Thus, when I came to Rome, for the first few weeks I used to think about why these people move their hands so much. Now that I have lived here for a while, I have realized that it is another way of communicating. A lot of people use hand gestures, but what makes the Italian hand gestures so unique is that there are gestures about everything. About 250 hand gestures are used in everyday conversations and each hand gesture represents distinct words or phrases. Moreover, the history behind …show more content…

We went to a town called Frascati. It is not a very popular tourist destination, so not many locals knew English. When we decided to have lunch at a local stop to taste Frascati’s Olive oil and bread, learning Italian Hand gestures during cultural mentoring really came handy for ordering food. The waiter greeted us in Italian. When none of us replied, he realized that we did not understand Italian. He pointed at his stomach and hit his belly with the hand with the palm facing down and fingers extended. We remembered that gesture; he was asking if we were hungry. As we nodded our heads to say yes, he handed us the menu. I ordered Pasta with Pomodoro, but then he said “Pomodoro” and did another hand gesture. He put his forefinger and thumb in the shape of “L” and shook the hand pivoting on the palm, which meant that there was no Pomodoro sauce left. So then I pointed to another item on the menu: Ravioli with Pesto. After finishing my pasta, I wanted to convey that it was very delicious. Thus, I used a common Italian hand gesture, which was touching my check with the index finger and pivoting it back and forth. From this experience, I realized that even if you don’t understand Italian you can communicate with these people using gestures. However, you have to have a basic idea about the