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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 |  | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4642 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 1 of 16 16 January 2013 at 11:21am | IP Logged | ||
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BBC has an interesting article about puns - how they have developed through times and how people consider them.
Personally I love puns, and English, but also other languages like French, give ample opportunity for creating puns, not least thanks to the high frequency of homophones in these languages. How about other languages out there? I don't know any Asian languages, so I would like to ask if e.g. Mandarin speakers are prone to creating puns? Maybe I am totally wrong, but I could imagine that tonal languages should give opportunities for it. Edit: Just to add an example of the British way of making puns: They have found horse meat in some burgers in the UK. The Independent newspaper has collected the best gags from Twitter related to this story. Edited by Ogrim on 16 January 2013 at 11:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ojorolla Diglot Groupie France Joined 4968 days ago 90 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 2 of 16 16 January 2013 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my country, using puns as joke is the easiest way to be branded gross, unfunny, behind the times. It may seem weird to some people in other culture, but it works like that in our culture, unless the puns are really bright ones. You'll get beaten and whatnot if you annoy people with your unfunny puns.
Here is a traditional pun in Korean - When your children ask you how they were born, you can answer : "We picked you up under the bridge." This works because in Korean, 'bridge' and 'legs' are homonyms. Edited by Ojorolla on 16 January 2013 at 12:55pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 16 16 January 2013 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I love puns, those horse gags are brilliant. My Dutch compatriots do not seem to share my
ill-informed sense of humour, however. Edited by tarvos on 16 January 2013 at 1:23pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4642 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 4 of 16 16 January 2013 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
I think it suits the British sense of humour very well, which I am a big fan of. However, you do find puns in French (here it's called "calembour"). I remember a comics store in Brussels called "La bande de six nez" (the gang of six noses). When pronounced it sounds the same as "La bande déssinée" (comics). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 5 of 16 16 January 2013 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, I do enjoy calembours. But I seem to be the only one. I also enjoy British humour a
lot, so that makes sense for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5769 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 6 of 16 16 January 2013 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||
Here people will just sigh and moan and eyeball you for bad puns. An ex bf of mine had (probably still has) the habit of repeating stories and jokes he found funny, because they kept their entertainment value for him. For anyone else they were funny the first time he told them, but awkward to hear the second time (and following). Many puns and especially spoonerisms are seen that way. At least around me puns are usually made by people who think they are funny (which often makes them unfunny for others) or by people who consciously make a fool of themselves for comic relief. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lakeseayesno Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico thepolyglotist.com Joined 4337 days ago 280 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 7 of 16 17 January 2013 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Japanese puns are called dajare, and they are dime a dozen thanks to the amount of homonyms that exist in the language. They're made up by linking two homonyms in a way that creates a funny (but often nonsensical) sentence. For example...
・「キムチ食った」と金、ちくった ("Kimchi kutta" to Kim, chikutta) Lit. "Kim informed he'd eaten kimchi" ・日本猿が日本去る！(Nihonsaru ga Nihon saru!) Lit. "The Japanese macaques are leaving Japan!" 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Presidio Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4584 days ago 39 posts - 150 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, German Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Gulf) | Message 8 of 16 17 January 2013 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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The word "funny" in English can mean several things. Primarily it means humorous, but it can also mean strange, unusual, suspect, or questionable. My favorite pun: Two cannibals were eating a clown. One leans over to the other and asks, "Does this task funny to you?" 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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