The Daily Feather — Ma Che Vuoi?
Speaking with our hands is woven into our Italian DNA. Gesticulation comes naturally, even in English. Although hand gestures to communicate Italian date back centuries, theories persist as to their origin. The likeliest explanation is that they were a means to an end, a ‘codification’ to unite multiple Italian dialects. After the fall of the Roman Empire, colonizers from regions Rome had conquered in its glory days rendered untenable a single local language. Seven societies commanded their own vernaculars: the Carolingians, Visigoths, Normans, Saracens, German tribes, French and Austrians. As for the long-lived legacy gestures, our favorite remains “ma che vuoi?” Keep your fingers together, with tips touching and pointing upward with your arm about a foot away from you. Move your hands up and down at the wrist and you’re saying, “What do you want?” which has bumped up against a ‘gesture frontier’ between Northern and Southern Italy. Add a ‘chin flick’ in the north and you’re conveying, in varying degrees of forcefulness, “Get lost.” In the south, it simply means “No.”
Investors have had a hard time chin-flicking the inflation narrative from their collective worry wall. Bank of America’s Global Fund Manager Survey revealed 41% of those surveyed in April indicated inflation was the biggest tail risk over the next year,