What are some unspoken rules in Italy?

Jody Padulano

Consultant

Originally Answered: What are some unwritten rules in Italy?

This is funny, I’ll give it a try.

1. You don’t ask Pineapple, or any fruit on a pizza. Never ever. Even if that’s your favourite pizza.
2. You don’t put ketchup on spaghetti or any pasta in front of an italian person. Not if you care about his opinion.
3. Don’t cuss. Some italian bad words are very insulting. Don’t say those, if you don’t precisely know when and how.
4. Forget about pounds, inches, feet, miles. We do use kilos, meters, and so on.
5. We don’t all sport moustache, we don’t all gesticulate, surely we don’t all own Ferrari (most of us won’t be even able to afford one for our entire lives). We are kinda good at sex and cooking, that is something you can expect from us.
6. Even if you recognize us as loud speaking people, try to consider we have appropriate places in which we can speak loud and places in which we don’t.
7. When you meet someone you don’t know you shake hands under the elbow. When you meet someone you already know you shake hands over the elbow.
8. Football. Not soccer. And it’s important. Get over with this. If an italian football supporter’s team loses a game, he/she can be saddened.
9. Family is important.
10. That gesture which means “OK” in US, with the thumb and index’s fingertips touching… we don’t use it. Really. We don’t. Thumbs up, we do.
11. We have three different gestures to say goodbye. All have the same meaning. One is the typical hand waving. Another is done by opening and closing one’s hand repeatedly. A third one is raising your hand over your shoulder with its palm in front of you and moving it forward and backward a couple of times.
12. We aren’t that supercatholic people any more. Abortion divorce and gays are topics we can face without problems. Most of all. Still some bigots remain, just don’t care about them.
13. Even if a lot of us lives abroad, we are very proud of our roots.
14. Watch out for scams. Really. Do.
15. Don’t assume we do speak english. Most of us don’t.
16. Don’t talk about money if you don’t know very well the person you’re talking to.
17. Seventeen is a bad luck number. Most street don’t even hold a 17, they jump from 15 to 19. Most hotels don’t too. This is because it’s the only number which can be derived from the letters X V I I which, anagrammed, are read VIXI, which in latin means “I lived” (hence I’m dead)
18. Always try to dress accordingly. If you don’t know what “accordingly” is, let an italian person help you out. Strangers to many italians not only look like they have no style in dressing. They can even look like they soak themselves in glue and they run straightforward into their wardrobe. Oh, we do use a lot of figurative sentences too.
19. Tips are not as much important as in the US, but if you feel like and you want to know how much we do tip, well that’s usually between 5% and 10%. And we don’t tip the waiter. We just pay an extra 5%/10% when paying off the bill.
20. You’ll do that without any need of my advice, but to be sure, you do empty your dishes. Don’t leave food. Bread is free usually, you can have more just by asking. Try to combine white wine with fish and red one with meat, don’t do the opposite.

And for God’s sake do not dunk anything salty in your coffee/cappuccino/caffelatte (latte is simply milk, so if you want “latte” ask “caffelatte”). You dunk only sweet food in it.