I've never used this part of the board before, but it seemed the best place to ask this question.
Last year, after my husband and I got off the train in Sorrento, we walked around the corner on the main road and there was a group of elderly men. I may have smiled, don't really remember, but as we started walking by, one of the old men got in my face and started yelling what sounded like "Gumbee". He kept yelling this at me over and over at me and his friends were pulling him back until we finally got further on. I don't think he was saying "Welcome to Sorrento".
This has really bothered me this past year, not knowing if I did something to offend this old man or what, but I have not been able to find any translation of this word, even under slang.
We are going back to Sorrento in a few weeks and I'd really like to know what it meant in case I'm yelled at again.

The only thing I can think of that sounds like "gumbee" is "gambe", which is the plural of "gamba" and means "legs". Was there anything that might have drawn attention to your legs? For an older Italian man, this might have been anything as harmless (to North Americans) as short shorts...

Inferring simply from your member name, if you have tattoos on your legs, this would most probably give rise to a reaction from a conservative older Italian man.

No tattoos on my legs but on my back usually covered. I probably did have shorts on that day, but so did a lot of other people getting off the train(very warm for late April). It was just strange him immediately yelling in my face like that. May have been the legs though.

I don't thik it was your legs, I would expect that in Sorrento people is used to that. I believe it was his WINE! Expecially if you say that his friends were pulling him back.

No worry. Ever heard the expression " Lo scemo del villaggio"?
Every place has one. He's the drinker that every now and then bothers the unaware people that crosses his road.

The one we have in Cortona will just start to talk about politics/dogs/sociality etc with no specific order. Do't get upset about it. Next time yell back!!

Anyway, gumbee reads as GUMBI!! The plural of GAMBA is GAMBE.
I have no idea what GUMBI means.

My guess is that he was using the dialect word for "compaesano," (someone from the same village), probably just being nice in his own, perhaps misguided, way...

Stef, then he would have said CUMPA' Like GOOMBAAH

Alessandra, "gumbee" as pronounced by an American would be much closer to Italian "gambi" than to "gombi" or "gumbi".

Yes, Eloise, you are right, but it means nothing. Nothing intelligible, at least. Gambi as in flowers??

I haven't an idea what he was saying other than gambe, but will tell you that within days of my arrival here I was stopped in a small pizza and a really elderly well-dressed man asked me to marry him. I was startled. I declined.
A week later I was walking down a busy main street and another man, not so old and not so well dressed insisted I was his wife. Seems like I would have remembered that?
In less than two weeks I had exhausted the local supply of true loonies. The lesser ones keep on popping up. One might be me.

We're going to Sorrento soon, so will tell my sisters not to smile at any older males.

But then, maybe one of them would like to since she is a 'merry widow.'

Elly

Could it have been something like "cumpi," which may be the way he pronounced "accumpi," which might be a dialect word for "you're showing up" ("compari"?)?