Signed Languages of the Deaf people have many «untranslatable» expressions. Especially of forms, movement and dynamics like the way a flock of birds is flying around in the sky, or the specific way a toon is squashed in an accident and pops up again.
To what extent can speakers of other languages compensate using gesticulation?
I am sure gesticulation is much cruder, but it has an advantage too: the signs for toon-squishing don't have to share configuration space with a big vocubulary of ordinary words.
Well, there's a saying amongst italians (and italian descendants) that in order to shut an italian up, you have to tie his/her hands. Conversely, they say you are never "trully speaking italian" until you start gesticulating as much as a native-speaker :)
That's not a problem. My son «pronounced» the word «bus» wrongly, and I could show him what exactly was wrong by standing up his toy yellow postbus vertically on the floor. The configuration space is enormous.
