Little Italian girl talking with her hands
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Are Italians by nature more manually voluble than other people?
Selected readings
- "Learning to speak Sicilian" (2/10/20) — some similar hand gestures
- "Baby talk" (12/21/10)
- "Baby talk, part 2" (8/19/18)
- "Twin talk" (3/31/11) — watch video here and here
- "The babbling phase: ranting toddler speaks out" (9/2/10)
- "Ask LL: parents' beliefs or infants' abilities?" (10/29/09)
- "Canine backtalk" (10/25/19)
- "Annoyed dog responding to the Islamic 'Call to Prayer'" (12/29/15)
- "Bird language" (6/15/17)
- "Barking roosters and crowing dogs" (2/18/18)
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
July 18, 2024 @ 5:43 am
Maybe Italians are just more “conversationally dynamic” to begin with? Anecdotally, I find that Italians tend to eschew “filler” or “garnish” words (I’m looking at you here, France) in favor of gestures that serve the same purpose. But we… uh, “they” also tend to be more comfortable with greater range of pitch and volume (cf. my frequently having to explain to my wife and children “I’m not yelling”), touching each other, kissing male and female relatives on the lips in greeting, etc.
More importantly, pecché nessun’ nun da a mangia’ alla povverina??? (Why isn’t anyone giving that poor baby something to eat?)
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
July 18, 2024 @ 7:36 am
P.S. Remember, a few "pages" back, the post about which languages were the "fastest"? I think the consensus settled on was that languages tend to convey the same amount of "information" per unit of time across the board, and that those, like Japanese, for example, where the ratio of information content / syllable is low, tends to be spoken "faster", while parsimonious English may be taken more leisurely.
Applying that here, when you think that it probably takes about 1.5 times more syllables to say something in Italian than in French (also note the vast area of blank space on the verso page of any parallel Latin/Italian translation) what if it's the case that Italians use "sign language" to, sort of, "move things along", allowing them to throw overboard some verbal ballast?
Lucas Christopoulos said,
July 18, 2024 @ 8:21 am
Chironomia (χειρονομία)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chironomia
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
July 18, 2024 @ 9:23 am
Oh. Nevermind. (linked from Lucas C's article):
Barbara Phillips Long said,
July 18, 2024 @ 6:03 pm
If the parents and people close to the child used hand gestures with her before she could talk, she might have started using them to communicate before she could talk. One of my nieces used baby sign language with her child, and I was impressed at the level of communication it allowed before the baby could talk. Knowing when the little one wanted more food, or a drink instead of food, made a meal at a restaurant uneventful, which I am sure other folks eating out appreciated.
For those unfamiliar with baby sign language, here’s more information:
https://www.thebump.com/a/how-to-teach-baby-sign-language
Michael Vnuk said,
July 18, 2024 @ 6:47 pm
In the late 1970s, I had a vacation job with two other university students a long way from the state capital. Our daytime work was geological mapping and sampling. We stayed in the shearers' quarters, as did the supervisors and field assistants. One student was of Italian background. I'm guessing his parents had come to Australia in the 1950s when many Europeans came to Australia. His Italian heritage was clear in his name and his looks, but he spoke like an Australian. During conversation, one of the supervisors, a man with an Anglo background, told him that he should be moving his hands around a lot more when he spoke. I assume that he wanted my colleague to be more stereotypically Italian.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
July 19, 2024 @ 2:08 pm
Michael,
O, the travails of the Italian-American/Australian! You can play up your peninsular propensities, but play it too far past the post, and people start perceiving you as though you had a monkey and an organ-grinder.
Biscia said,
July 21, 2024 @ 2:41 am
Both of the things she's doing (the joined hands shaking up and down, and the pursed-finger "pigna," i.e. pine cone hand) are very specific gestures expressing disbelief, the former a bit stronger than the latter: "WTF?" They're totally incongruous in a baby, of course! My guess is that at some point she imitated an adult who was jokingly making the gesture at her, and she got a big laugh, so now it's her schtick.
And yes, in Italy people *by culture* are on average more manually voluble. Any immigrant will also quickly become so, although if they're like me they'll still be getting certain movements slightly wrong even after decades. There's an entire vocabulary – my husband and I, just for fun, once tried counting the gestures with specific meanings, and came up with about sixty. Of course they're just isolated expressions that don't remotely resemble an actual sign language, but handshape and location are still important, and it's natural to start learning them very young.
/df said,
July 25, 2024 @ 5:25 pm
I once worked in an office with a guy who was responsible for the company's business with ESA's research centre in Frascati. Although he was a potentially dour exile from NE England, from my desk with a clear view of his office, it was always obvious when his phone call was connected to Italy, because he gestured with the telephone just as if he had been face-to-face with the other party.