Speaking My English: It’s All in the Hands

Do you use your hands when you talk?

I do.

Or, as someone at church asked me recently, “do you just talk until your hands stop moving, or can you speak if they’re not?”

I laughed.

(Hey, I’m moving my hands as I type this–including every time I pick them up off the keyboard.  Hmmm. I wonder if that’s why I type so fast?)

Some would say I come by this honestly. My mother was born in Sicily.

Of course she moved to Southern California as an infant and thus was raised as American as Italian immigrants running a chicken farm could manage, but still, Sicilian blood runs through (half) my veins.

(I can’t believe it. Both hands went up facing each other, fingers pointing and the thumbs indicating a small amount).

Did the real Italians use movement to explain?

I don’t remember my grandparents motioning when they spoke. My grandfather was a taciturn man, given to smiling and gentle ways as he tended his vines, garden and few animals (the chickens were gone by the time I came along).

My grandmother, on the other hand, was a shrill loving woman whom I seldom understood. She, indeed, reminded me of the phantom chickens with her small mouth quickly burbling incomprehensible syllables.

I might have understood better if she had moved her hands.

Wait, I do recall a giving up motion.

(Just tossed my hands in the air near my head, palms facing backwards.)

I’m thinking about this now because we’re planning a trip back to Italy to see old haunts and friends. The last time we visited in 2010, I borrowed my niece’s Italian grammar book and practiced before I left–in hopes I could say something or at least manage the numbers.

Using motion to speak Italian

I got along okay, frequently because I spoke with animation and used my hands continually.

My husband could hardly contain his laughter one night in a hotel lobby. I’d gone down to ask the concierge a few questions.

He came up behind me and, in his words five minutes later:

“There you were, chatting away in what sounded like Italian to me. Your hands were moving nonstop. Until it was time to listen.

Then you dropped them, and the man behind the counter started in, speaking Italian slowly, and moving his hands.

You followed suit, back and forth, hands and mouth and he replied in the same way. Maybe it is an Italian thing?”

(I just imitated that motion, sort of like rolling your hands in a muff. Yikes!)

Honestly, I don’t recall the Italian side of my family doing this. Maybe it is genetic? Maybe it was so commonplace as to be unremarked upon?

Whatever.

(Hands just went out in modified Grammy “give up” with a shrug.)

Perhaps it’s more of an art form (I can hope), to bring a third dimension into the single dimension of plain words.

Chi lo sa? (with a shrug and wry grimace)

Who knows?

Ciao. (Invent your own hand motion for goodbye!)

Oh, and what do I look like when I talk? See for yourself:

Tweetables

Am I the only one who uses her hands to talk? Click to Tweet

Motions and laughter: the real way to speak Italian. Click to Tweet

How to speak Italian without words. Click to Tweet