[Guido] You can't offend the Italian

Guido Giacomo Gattai

The most funny thing that my Polish friends remarked about me is that I wave at everybody when I arrive or when I go away, and even to people that I do not know – just because they are in group with somebody I know or because they salute somebody that is in group with me. 

I know that it's completely silly in Poland but unfortunately that is pretty automatic for me: as everybody knows in Italy we gesture a lot, and for almost everything.

Italian gestures are probably the most well known in the world, in fact each time that somebody wants to caricature an Italian speaker starts moving his hands like a fool. That is very funny for us because - of course - any gesture has a signification in Italian and it's incredible to watch those people saying a lot of disconnected things very fast smiling while they say "I hate you" or "I am going to kill you".

To have a general idea about how Italian works we can say firstly that vertical gestures are more about explanation and horizontal ones more about human relation that. The more inter relational ones are of course the ones that includes touching the other person. Those ones always means something serious like "I am your friend", "I love you" or – the more aggressive ones – "I want to beat you up", "you disgust me" and similar.

Another important thing to know about Italian gestures is that no gesture means a single specific thing, everything always depends from the context. We do have – of course – general rules but we play on those rules a lot. Exactly like in Italian is possible to create words – and so every family has his own specific vocabulary – gestures as well are always changing from speaker to speaker, from situation to situation, depending by the people you are talking with, the place you are 

Other little secret: Italian gestures... are a huge false friend! In Italian is very impolite to gesture too much or to do a wrong gesture in a wrong moment. And... never believe too much to Italian gestures or communication in general: we always say way more than what we really mean. That's why – for example – often Polish people think that Italian aren't reliable: for us “I love you” means “I like you” and “I hate you” means just that probably I will call you back in 7 minutes instead of 3.

That's why you do not have to pay that much attention to our gesture. And even why any gesture you do... we will never be offended.

Guido Giacomo Gattai from Italy