Continuing my theme of ‘body language’, here, for your entertainment, is another colorful and expressive Italian gesto (gesture):

‘Che Palle!’

(for an explanation of this expression click HERE).

O.K. so once you have done a few warm up exercises and loosened up those limbs we can begin:

1. Place both hands slightly in front of you at hip level, with your fingers open and palms facing upwards.

2. Curve the middle, ring, and little finger of each hand inwards until they touch your palm.

3. Imagine that you are holding an ‘egg’ in each hand using your thumbs and index fingers.

4. Rotating your hands from the wrist slowly shake your ‘eggs’ up and down with a bit of extra emphasis on the downward motion.

Variations: The above description illustrates the gesture for an expression of annoyed boredom. If you are really fed up about something, or extremely bored you can use a more emphatic version of this gesture and include a bit of movement from the elbows. This time imagine that you are holding two heavy ostrich ‘eggs’, and therefore your thumbs and fingers will be further apart.

Now I don’t want to be responsible for a bunch of unruly gesticulating foreigners arriving here in Italy, although I have to admit that watching a coupled of hundred hot tired tourists queuing outside the Uffizzi and making the ‘che palle!’ gesture could be highly entertaining! No, I am simply writing these blogs for your enlightenment.

So, when you have changed your order for the third time in that nice little trattoria down in the piazza and you happen to notice that the long suffering waiter with the weary smile seems to be shaking a couple of invisible ostrich eggs up and down somewhere below his waist as he plods back to the kitchen, you will understand exactly what he means!

Alla prossima