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Puns in English and other languages | ||
Tags: Joke | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Presidio Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4375 days ago 39 posts - 150 votes  Speaks: English*, Russian, German Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Gulf) | Message 9 of 16 18 January 2013 at 6:10am | IP Logged |
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I should actually read what I type.
It should read: Two cannibals were eating a clown. One leaned over to the other and said, "Does this taste funny to you?" 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kaptengröt Tetraglot Groupie Sweden Joined 4132 days ago 92 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic Studies: Japanese | Message 10 of 16 18 January 2013 at 7:11am | IP Logged |
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I always thought puns were like "little kid and old men" humour. Probably really good for learners to learn various different words though. And personally I think they are extremely overused in American advertisements and stuff... My wife, a Swede, thinks puns in English are really funny for some reason.
Recently I was playing a game on Facebook in Swedish ("Chefville") and it is full of Swedish puns and references. When I asked a Swede, they just said "I don't know how to feel about that. They must be a really good translator, because normally translators either ignore jokes like that or just directly translate and miss the joke entirely, but reading puns in Swedish is really weird, since you only ever really see them in English. We can make them of course, but our humour is more nonsense humour. Where puns are about making wordplay jokes that make sense due to the words involved, ours is more like making jokes that don't make sense." From what I have seen, Swedes really love making "puns" that are instead based on how similar foreign words sound to a Swede (whether compared to Swedish or other foreign languages). For example, speaking in English and saying "I am a winner, I am a wiener" because they think winner and wiener sound really alike (I think this is just as bad as making puns...). Most of the times I have seen them completely in Swedish, was because they were actually translating jokes (probably from English - sometimes it's extremely obvious they are writing/translating puns because the original American advertisement had them). But that's only my small experience, and I don't actively look for jokes in any language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| NewLanguageGuy Groupie France youtube.com/NewLangu Joined 4401 days ago 74 posts - 134 votes Speaks: English* | Message 11 of 16 19 January 2013 at 12:25pm | IP Logged |
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I'm a big pun fan. I find they are good as a way of broadening your vocabulary. They are sometimes entirely reliant on cultural knowledge though.
For example.... if I told this pun to a non-British native speaker, it would have no meaning: On New Year's Eve, I asked Jonathan Ross to describe his experiences with garbage disposal in 2012. He said, "It's wheelie bin a fantastic year". Firstly, you'd have to know the expression "Wheelie Bin" which I think in American English is called a "dumpster". Secondly, you'd have to know who Jonathan Ross is, and that he can't pronounce the letter "R". On the other hand, there are puns that can be appreciated by all (and I've tested them on many nationalities).... E.G I saw a drunk guy from Kathmandu shouting and swearing last night. It was a nepalling display of behaviour. Puns are also a coping mechanism in some professions. It's not unknown for police officers to make very dark jokes about bad things that have just happened. If they didn't have that humour, they'd never cope. For anyone who wants to see relentless puns, look up Tim Vine or Stewart Francis on Youtube. They rely on the theory of "so bad it's good".... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6999 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 12 of 16 19 January 2013 at 2:19pm | IP Logged |
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I've seen this on a billboard:
You're Wife is Hot! Better get the air conditioning fixed. Advertisement for a Heating and Air Conditioning company. Edited by luke on 19 January 2013 at 2:19pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4972 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 13 of 16 20 January 2013 at 3:19pm | IP Logged |
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- You look so young! is it botox?
- yes, I have big buttocks. Lame, I know. I made it up myself. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ling Diglot Groupie Taiwan Joined 4380 days ago 61 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Indonesian, Thai | Message 14 of 16 20 January 2013 at 3:27pm | IP Logged |
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Mandarin has a lot of homophones and near-homophonous words. The Chinese absolutely
love puns! You see them a lot in titles of artistic works, newspaper article titles, and TV news captions. Lots of jokes are pun based, such as the one with the abused sheep who hides out in the 7-11 because "24 小時不打烊" - Open 24 hours ("24 hours not close") sounds like ("24 hours not beat sheep"). Or, for some even blacker humor, the one about the two cancer patients who, after chatting non-stop for a while, suddenly stopped talking and died. Why? Mei hua liao ("nothing left to talk about" (沒話 聊) sounds like "no chemo" (沒化療)). A lot of details from Chinese culture and symbolism come from words that are (or were a long time ago) homophonous, such as "four" (si) symbolizing "death" (si), or yellow (huang) being the color of the Emperor (huang). Or the peach (tao) standing for longevity (shou, but in the Chinese of long ago, tao). Edited by ling on 20 January 2013 at 3:52pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ling Diglot Groupie Taiwan Joined 4380 days ago 61 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Indonesian, Thai | Message 15 of 16 20 January 2013 at 3:40pm | IP Logged |
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double post Edited by ling on 20 January 2013 at 3:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Çay Fincanı Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Turkey Joined 4130 days ago 5 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Turkish*, Azerbaijani*, English, Japanese Studies: German, Russian, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 16 of 16 20 January 2013 at 9:36pm | IP Logged |
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The word "pun" means "cinas" in Turkish and used mostly on poems for creating aesthetic beauty with using words that
have same pronunciation but different meanings, as seen here: Doğan güneşim sendin yüreğimden kanadım [You were my rising sun, my heart bled (kanadım = bled)] Boğan sensizlikteyim kırık kolum kanadım [In the deep loneliness, my arm and my wing are broken (kanadım = my wing)] 1 person has voted this message useful |
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