# In languages with grammatical gender, are jokes/witticisms ever made that take advantage of this? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 12, 2012, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489 "2012-09-12T09:26:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Pitchmeister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pitchmeister/32/3459_2.png) [@Pitchmeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pitchmeister)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/21 "2012-09-12T17:18:31Z")
> [@SCAdian](#): > > So _der Leiter der Leiter_ would be the supervisor of the ladder? That’s right! ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/22 "2012-09-12T17:39:44Z")
My German teacher liked this one: What’s better than Bonnie and Clyde? Bonnie ohne Kleide! ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/23 "2012-09-12T19:17:34Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Spanish yes. There’s also words which change meaning depending on gendered ending and in some cases the jokes are so easy nobody over age 7 bothers with them: _pollo_ is chicken, _polla_ can be either a young hen or, more commonly, a penis (_huevos_, eggs is slang for testicles; a penis sits on top of two of them like a hen). I remember reading a Spanish joke along these lines that involved a man and a woman (sitting a different tables, as they don’t know each other) ordering breakfast on a train, and the server mixed up their orders. When the man & woman realize the mistake, the man offers to trade, and his wording apparently makes it very funny and risque in Spanish, but the joke is completely lost in English because of the gender words, which don’t translate properly. ---
**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/24 "2012-09-12T19:29:03Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Also let me mention one story a linguist told me. There was a French language feminist magazine published here and an author of one of the articles got criticized for having used too many masculine nouns in her article. One of those masculine nouns might well have been vagina–_le vagin_. I’ve always found that unintentionally funny. ---
**Author:** ![jepflast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@jepflast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jepflast)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/25 "2012-09-12T20:22:19Z")
This is fascinating stuff! I can’t wait to hear more! Messing around with grammar often results in nonsense, but it’s interesting to note that it means something–or subtly changes the meaning–_whenever possible_, so to speak. Grammatical gender appears to be an area particularly rife with possibilities. From a comedy perspective, I almost regret that English doesn’t have it, but there are tremendous advantages to not having to worry about adjective endings and determiners that agree with the nouns: we can swap out words (Mad Libs-style) or make spoonerisms with great ease, and I suspect English is high in the ranks of languages suited to punning. ---
**Author:** ![Abortion\_Fanatic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/76d3ee/32.png) [@Abortion\_Fanatic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abortion_Fanatic)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/26 "2012-09-12T20:51:28Z")
> [@EmilyG](#): > > I’m a native English speaker, but I’ve learned French as well. I’m taking a job skills class that’s entirely in French. One of the francophone students in the class said to the teacher that she finds it cute when a non-native French speaker gets a word’s gender wrong. It is pretty cute, yeah. I grew up with a lot of Filipino friends and Tagalog speakers learning English will often say “he” across the board, for every sex. “Where’s Ella going?” “Oh, he had to go put his makeup on”. It’s not enough to take you out of the sentence or to be super confusing, enough to sound silly and be cute. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/27 "2012-09-12T20:53:32Z")
> [@Heart\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > You guys are killing me here. Could you elaborate, please? I am honestly trying to think of some jokes. I’m not really a big fan of Hindi humor, but I’m sure I will. All I can think of is a pun: Q. What do you call a lonely banana? A. Akela. “Kela” meaning banana, and “akela” meaning lonely…get it? Get it? HAHAHAH…not. ETA: Hindi is my first language and I still fuck up gender sometimes. What gender is a computer? A TV? A car? You have to know all these! ---
**Author:** ![Cliffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/28 "2012-09-12T22:17:45Z")
> [@Abortion\_Fanatic](#): > > It is pretty cute, yeah. I grew up with a lot of Filipino friends and Tagalog speakers learning English will often say “he” across the board, for every sex. There are a lot of Filipina nurses in this area. **Mrs. Cliffy** and I found it incredibly frustrating that none of them could remember our daughter’s gender. Which wouldn’t seem like a big deal, except the hospital had lost her at one point, so anything that suggested confusion about which one was ours after that made me crazy. I don’t know if Germans make jokes about the word for girl (das Madchen) being of neuter gender, but I can assure you that American junior-high school German students certainly do. –Cliffy ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Steele](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecae2f/32.png) [@Lance\_Steele](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Steele)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/29 "2012-09-12T22:18:12Z")
> [@SCAdian](#): > > So _der Leiter der Leiter_ would be the supervisor of the ladder? Nitpick: The second “der” is genitive plural, so it’s “the leader of the ladders”. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/30 "2012-09-12T23:31:37Z")
> [@KarlGrenze](#): > > Some words take either gender depending on how it was adopted or situations. _ **La computadora** /el computador_/the computer are all the same, but some regions use one way, others use the other. _La mar/el mar_ is another one that changes. I’ve personally only have seen the feminine form more commonly in poetry and poetic prose, while the second form is the most commonly used. Flashback to 11th grade, circa 1968: Hewlett-Packard gave our high school a desktop computer, the high tech thingy of the day. This was the fore-runner of today’s programmable pocket-sized calculators. A certain math teacher, who also taught a Spanish math class and was an incurable punster, was careful to refer to the device as _La calculatadora_, NEVER as _La computadora._ After all, the “com” of computadora sounds much like “con” (“with”), and who knows who puta Dora might be! For the Spanish-impaired:puta means bitch, typically also meaning whore. ---
**Author:** ![grama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7cd45c/32.png) [@grama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grama)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/31 "2012-09-13T00:37:03Z")
Talking about jokes, I just remembered one. “Qué es una vaca loca?” R:“Un toro con cartera” _“What is a mad cow?” R:“A bull with a purse”_ \*Loco/a is mad or crazy, and also _loca_, as said before, means a flamboyant man. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/32 "2012-09-13T00:47:34Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Let me mention also that gender is quite fluid. A friend spent her first 12 years in Italy in a small town about 100 miles from Rome. She mentioned that the genders of quite a number of words differed from that of the Roman dialect. Probably outside the scope of this thread, but I wonder when and how gender changes occur in languages. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/33 "2012-09-13T00:56:20Z")
> [@Lance\_Steele](#): > > Nitpick: The second “der” is genitive plural, so it’s “the leader of the ladders”. Nitpick FAIL. The article _der_ is both genitive singular for feminine nouns, and genitive plural. However, the plural for Leiter (f) is Leitern across the four cases, so ‘of the ladders’ is ‘der Leitern’, whereas ‘of the ladder’ is ‘der Leiter’. The genitive plural for Leiter (m) _is_ der Leiter, though, so “der Leiter der Leiter” can mean both the leader of the leader and the leader of the ladder. [helpful link](http://www.canoo.net/services/Controller?dispatch=inflection&input=Leiter&features=(Cat+N)&lang=de) ---
**Author:** ![Topologist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/topologist/32/3208_2.png) [@Topologist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Topologist)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/34 "2012-09-13T02:08:17Z")
Not quite what the OP is looking for, but: In the short story “The Entertaining Episode of the Article in Question” by Dorothy L. Sayers (one of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries), our hero nabs the bad guy due to a gender mistake he makes in French. The title of the story is itself an English pun referencing that. (And now I’ve given away too much.) ---
**Author:** ![jepflast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@jepflast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jepflast)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/35 "2012-09-13T04:01:57Z")
> [@Abortion\_Fanatic](#): > > It is pretty cute, yeah. I grew up with a lot of Filipino friends and Tagalog speakers learning English will often say “he” across the board, for every sex. “Where’s Ella going?” “Oh, he had to go put his makeup on”. > It’s not enough to take you out of the sentence or to be super confusing, enough to sound silly and be cute. Aha! This is interesting, because I found the same thing in Jamaica. When talking to some locals (who speak English in the Jamaican way and also a hasty version of it that is their regional patois), they kept referring to a dog as “he” even though it was clearly female. Confused, I asked, “But Humphrey is a female, right?” “Oh yah, he’s a female.” ---
**Author:** ![Pitchmeister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pitchmeister/32/3459_2.png) [@Pitchmeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pitchmeister)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/36 "2012-09-13T05:31:37Z")
> [@Svejk\_1](#): > > Nitpick FAIL. The article _der_ is both genitive singular for feminine nouns, and genitive plural. However, the plural for Leiter (f) is Leitern across the four cases, so ‘of the ladders’ is ‘der Leitern’, whereas ‘of the ladder’ is ‘der Leiter’. The genitive plural for Leiter (m) _is_ der Leiter, though, so “der Leiter der Leiter” can mean both the leader of the leader and the leader of the ladder. > > [helpful link](http://www.canoo.net/services/Controller?dispatch=inflection&input=Leiter&features=(Cat+N)&lang=de) Nitpick FAIL fail (well, only a small one): _the leader of the leader_ would be _der Leiter des Leiters_. It only works with the masculine plural: _the leader of the leaders_. ---
**Author:** ![Pitchmeister](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pitchmeister/32/3459_2.png) [@Pitchmeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pitchmeister)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/37 "2012-09-13T05:41:27Z")
> [@Cliffy](#): > > I don’t know if Germans make jokes about the word for girl (das Madchen) being of neuter gender, but I can assure you that American junior-high school German students certainly do. It’s not that we joke about it, but it does make sentences a bit awkward at times. Like with _das Kind_ (child), you have to use _es_ instead of _er_ or _sie_ to make the grammatical genders agree which even to me sounds weird sometimes. Also _der Hund_ and _die Katze_ (dog and cat) are male and female respectively by default, so you have to specify when you mean a bitch or a tomcat. Come to think of it, funny how those words exist also in English, but not their gender counterparts (or do they - is there a word for male dog or female cat?). ---
**Author:** ![Abortion\_Fanatic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/76d3ee/32.png) [@Abortion\_Fanatic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abortion_Fanatic)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/38 "2012-09-13T07:12:47Z")
> [@Pitchmeister](#): > > Come to think of it, funny how those words exist also in English, but not their gender counterparts (or do they - is there a word for male dog or female cat?). A female cat is a ‘molly’ or a ‘queen’. I don’t think there is a special term for a male dog - I mean, it’s a sire if he’s made pups, but outside of that? Looking [here](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dog), the third definition for dog is “the male of such an animal”. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/39 "2012-09-13T09:58:47Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Flashback to 11th grade, circa 1968: Hewlett-Packard gave our high school a desktop computer, the high tech thingy of the day. This was the fore-runner of today’s programmable pocket-sized calculators. A certain math teacher, who also taught a Spanish math class and was an incurable punster, was careful to refer to the device as _La calculatadora_, NEVER as _La computadora._ _Calculadora_, no ta. And in English, a female cat is also a puss or pussy. My Jamaican landlady referred to her female cat as a puss in a perfectly normal tone of voice but to her own parts as a catty, looking both sides first and making this “I’m being so naughty!” face. In Euskal Herria and nearby areas, using the wrong gender on adjectives is jokingly called “Biscay-style matching”: many words flip gender between Basque and Spanish, so people whose first language is Basque will often make that mistake. The whole line is _concordancia vizcaína: pollo gorda, gallina flaco_ (Biscay-style gender matching: she-fat chicken, he-thin hen). ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489/40 "2012-09-13T15:28:33Z")
I heard this in music school; I don’t remember from which Spanish-speaking country the guy was who told it to me: _El toca el violín, y ella la viola._ He plays the violin, and she the viola. He plays the violin, and rapes her. (“La” is feminine article as well as third-person feminine pronoun; viola is the singular verb for “violar,” rape, as well as of course the noun for viola.) A very music school male joke. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-languages-with-grammatical-gender-are-jokes-witticisms-ever-made-that-take-advantage-of-this/634489.md?page=3)