Italian hand gestures (Part 2)

Last Summer, I was happily soaking up the sun on a beach in Greece when I heard the sound of some motor scooters approaching. After few minutes, I saw two boys and a girl coming down the beach and then stop to enjoy view.

Then, one of the two boys – I’ll call him Roger – started to look around and told his friends he didn’t see any beach cabin. Indeed, there wasn’t any.

Roger was the only one among his friends that wasn’t wearing his bathing suit and, damn it, he desperately wanted to swim in those crystal clear waters.

How to solve this situation?

Well, I saw him approaching a Greek man on the beach and explaining him, in English, that he needed to find a beach cabin. Unfortunately for Roger, the Greek man didn’t speak English at all.

At this point I thought: “he will certainly use hand gestures!”

But no, Roger decided to speak slower, instead. Maybe in this way the Greek man would have understood. Obviously, he didn’t.

“Come on, move your hands, mimic something”, I kept thinking.

Roger, instead, tried with different sentences, but again, none of them worked.

“Hand gestures, hand gestures, hand gestures” kept ringing in my head like a mantra.

To my disappointment, Roger decided otherwise. He played his last card, grabbing his bathing suit and showing it to the Greek man. Somehow, this time the Greek man understood.

Had this situation happened to an Italian, he would have definitely acted differently. He would probably have mimicked a house, the act of undressing, dressing, diving and swimming. And, who knows, maybe in a minute the problem would have been solved.

Are hand gestures an Italian-only feature? Honestly, I don’t know, but for sure if you plan to visit Italy, it’s better you learn at least some Italian hand gestures. Yes, because Italians don’t speak only with their mouth but also with their hands!

So, today let’s see together some Italian gestures with the help of some of the skatches made by Alfredo Cassano – you can learn six more gestures reading my previous article Italian gestures (Part 1).

I DON’T CARE

This gesture means both Who cares? and I don’t give a damn.

Giulia non è d’accordo…ma in fondo chi se ne frega di quello che pensa lei, no?
Giulia disagrees with me…but in the end who cares what she thinks, right?

Non me ne frega niente se eri ubriaco! Hai distrutto il garage!
I don’t give a damn if you were drunk! You destroyed the garage!

ALONE

Francesco e Marco a un certo punto se ne sono andati, e sono rimasto lì da solo come un’idiota.
At a certain point, Francesco and Marco left, and I ended up being there alone like an idiot.