Italian Hand Gestures- A Book Review

Italian hand gesture

Italian hand gesture for “What the bleep?”


An expressive addition to your resource kit to learning Italian is the book by Bruno Munari: “Speak Italian: The fine art of the gesture”.

I definitely recommend adding this humorous tool to your box. The book is an accurate depiction — illustrated in photos with an explanation on the opposite page — of the myriad Italian gestures. My one exception would be the ‘horn’ gesture (see photo below)… which differently from what the book says, is used to communicate to someone that they ‘have horns’ or are ‘cornuto’ … meaning they have been cuckholded, aka cheated on.  Perhaps the single most offensive Italian gesture… it is considered more insulting than ‘the finger’!

“Speak Italian, The fine art of the gesture, a supplement to the Italian dictionary”

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Italian hand gesture

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