Mannerism? No surprise it's an Italian invention!

[Caesar]

On a much more popular level, there's a vast speechless capability in Italy to communicate by standard expressions and gestures, with a common core and regional add-ons. You may very synthetically express complex concept and their nuances and even silently make statements.
I cannot say if ancient Latins, with their most effective and condensate use of language, had also a similar, wide and precise gesture vocabulary, (probably they did considering their military needs and effectiveness), but we still have a most developped gesture language core surviving across generations.

Now here's a funny video with a sort of lesson number one of basic Speechless Italian for Tourists.
I cannot say if it may be useful for expressive paintings or comics but I think it's worthless to enjoy and laugh at it, if You like.
I can grant this vocabulary little sample it's correct and there's no bad word. LOL
It's therefore neither a picturesque and completely wrong representation of Italian gesture speaking (as on foreign movies) nor the ostentatious and conceptually poor conventional gesture language common to many comedies and commercial productions in US or ridiculous/ handicap-like gestures I often see as shared by rappers and hi-hopper all over the world by emulation and, sometimes, to integrate some sort of personality gap.

http://www.lastampa.it/2016/05/02/mu...II/pagina.html

[D Akey]

How cool is this, Caesar! I love it.

You know I had a neighbor friend of Italian extraction via Argentina who used all these mannerisms. It's like Mannerism for sure, but also speaking with Emoticons painted in the air as one speaks. I would love to be in Italy for this 'dance' alone, let alone all the other fun.

Thanks for posting this. Really made my day.

[Caesar]

How cool is this, Caesar! I love it.

You know I had a neighbor friend of Italian extraction via Argentina who used all these mannerisms. It's like Mannerism for sure, but also speaking with Emoticons painted in the air as one speaks. I would love to be in Italy for this 'dance' alone, let alone all the other fun.

Thanks for posting this. Really made my day.

Unfortunately I didn't find the entire course or the advanced one, but this was also helpful when You didn't wish to use much or none of Your voice in certain moments and I guess ir was easier for Italian deaf people, in the old days, before they set up a conventional signs language ... LOL
For Your friend, obviously, it could not be than an irrepressible side dish to his verbal communication, since he could not expect to be understood by gestures (only) by foreign friends more than a stranger hearing cockney in London.
There's an immediate and somehow deep psychological content in this kind of communication and also a sort of natural complicity or solidarity. I remember I enjoyed very much all this, postures, expressions etc. of old people talking among them with all these "enhanced" ways to express and convey all they could when I was a kid, especially in villages and with dialects expressions, locutions and proverb to complement.

[gxhpainter2]

Unfortunately I didn't find the entire course or the advanced one, but this was also helpful when You didn't wish to use much or none of Your voice in certain moments and I guess ir was easier for Italian deaf people, in the old days, before they set up a conventional signs language ... LOL
For Your friend, obviously, it could not be than an irrepressible side dish to his verbal communication, since he could not expect to be understood by gestures (only) by foreign friends more than a stranger hearing cockney in London.
There's an immediate and somehow deep psychological content in this kind of communication and also a sort of natural complicity or solidarity. I remember I enjoyed very much all this, postures, expressions etc. of old people talking among them with all these "enhanced" ways to express and convey all they could when I was a kid, especially in villages and with dialects expressions, locutions and proverb to complement.

very enjoyable to watch and learn from your very rich culture and "see" the real thing in action

[Caesar]

Glad to see You enjoyed it, dear Gary. An interesting and funny curiosity at least, I guess. Not exactly the same concept than the American native sign language, but interesting anyhow.

By the way, I learned that U.S. forces, in order not to have secret information leakages by some enemy decryption tool, used Navajos soldiers to communicate in their language. In Italy the same role was played by Sardinian soldiers, since their dialect could not be understood.
Moreover, about WWII curiosities, we also had our Monument Men, but they were not military people, rather most Musei curators, priest and an army of common people removing and hiding masterpieces when situation eventually required it, especially after the armistice.
Now we formed and properly trained for the scenario an "army" of experts to recover and restore monuments and artpieces in Iraq. Europe is probably going to build on such a core following our proposal.
That's a kind of mission to which we are sensitive, probably also as grateful as we are to our ancestors leaving an immeasurable patrimony.