Language-based humor
- From: "Marc Frisch" <marcfrisch@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 27 Oct 2005 05:10:53 -0700
There's a certain type of humor that is based on ambiguity, which is
IMHO very common both in the German and the English language. For
example:
"Brecht das Brot und verteilt es unter den Armen!"
("Break the bread and distribute it among the poor" but also
"Throw up the bread and rub it under your arms")
or the famous
"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana."
I've been living in France for more than a year now and I'm desperately
trying to have a laugh once in a while, but this kind of humor doesn't
seem to exist in the French language (or maybe the French don't care to
share it with foreigners?) Does anybody know of examples like the above
in
French (or maybe in other languages; that would also be interesting to
know...)?
Well, French has the reputation to be a rather precise language and as
being
very well suited for legal documents because of that. Maybe the loss of
humorous phrases is the cost...
However, I've come very close to suspect that it's in fact NOT the
language,
but maybe the people. Recently, I had a conversation with a Greek girl:
Me: "Tu es cynique."
Girl: "Je suis pas une chienne!"
(works well in English too:
Me: "Your cynical."
Girl: "I'm not a bitch!")
I had tears in my eyes, because I realized that this was the first time
since I've been in France that I heard something really funny in
French, but not
even from a native speaker (okay, I admit that the above joke was a lot
easier for a native speaker of Greek than for a Frenchman with no
knowledge of the etymology of "cynical"). I remember having tried to
watch a
French comedy show ("Un gars et une fille") which left me astonished by
its
complete lack of humor and after which I gave up watching French
television.
This is really not meant to offend the French. I love living in France,
but
if you have any sense of humor, where do I find the key, please?
Sorry, if the end was a little off-topic,
Marc
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Language-based humor
- From: Jeff Whittaker
- Re: Language-based humor
- From: Jacques Guy
- Re: Language-based humor
- Prev by Date: Re: Writing French without accented characters?
- Next by Date: Re: michelle bachelet -- how does she pronounce her name?
- Previous by thread: Re: The Myth of Arbitrariness
- Next by thread: Re: Language-based humor
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
