There’s a great biligual pun in the movie “The Wages of Fear”
The (American) supervisor is sending off two trucks full of nitrogylcerine, knowing that they may explode on any bump. Trying to be charming, he says to the French driver “Je te dis merde” (kind of like “break a leg”, it’s a common way of saying “Good luck”, but literally means “I tell you shit”). The French driver, hostile, leans out the window and says, in English, “I tell you the same thing”.
I thought it was a particularly funny insult, especially because you had to know both languages to understand. The captioned translation was, of course, inadequate.
I can think of one Italian pun. This concerns the island of Isola Bella (beautiful island) located in the middle of Lake Maggiore. It is supposed to be a pun on Isabella, the wife of Prince Carlo Borromeo who constructed a garden on the island in honour of his wife.
Que dice la mama pescado a sus hijitos?
Nada.
What does the mommy fish say to her babies?
Nothing/Swim.
I also have one that really doesn’t work at all unless its spoken, and has to be said with the correct accent to make sense: (a riddle)
Hay 40 caballos en un corral, sin techo, y estaba (lloviendo/yo viendo). Cuantos caballos se mojaron?
There are 40 horses in a corral, with no roof, and (it was raining/I was watching). How many horses got wet?
the victim’s answer: all of them! (it was raining!)
your answer: none of them! (I was just watching!)
This one is bilingual:
Porque es el mar azul?
Porque los pescaditos dicen “bleu, bleu”
Why is the ocean blue?
Because the little fish say “blue, blue” (said in that squinty, fish-looking way, with your lips out)
Bennet Cerf wrote a French/English one. A French queen’s fancy cat bore a litter of kittens by an alley cat. Two died at birth, and the queen ordered her lacky to put the other three in a bag and drown them. He returned, solemn and kittenless, and reported, “Un, deux, trois cats sank.”
English/Spanish: What do you say to a cow that fell off a bridge?
Nada, buey! (Swim, cow!/Nothing, fool!)
My father told me this pun. Apologies if I butcher the Spanish.
A Spaniard on vacation in the States realizes that he forgot to pack clean socks. He goes to the store, but he doesn’t speak English, and has great difficulty explaining to the shopkeeper what he needs. Using a great deal of pointing and pantomime, the shopkeeper finally holds up a packet of new socks. The Spaniard is very excited to finally get the item he wants, and exclaims, “Eso si, que es?”*
Disgusted, the shopkeeper exclaims, “If you can spell it, why can’t you say it?”
*“This is it, isn’t it?”
AskNott: The band Marcy Playground had that joke on their latest album, although the singer told it in the form, "Two cats are racing to swim across a river. One of the cats is named ‘One-two-three,’ and the other is named “Un-Deux-Trois.’ Which cat won?”
In Latin, anus, ani (2nd dec.) is, well, anus (or more appropriately, a ring). As anus, anus (4th dec., the second “u” is a long “u”) it means hag or old woman. I don’t remember where it was used (I haven’t had Latin in 4 years and I read everything in translation now) but I do recall my prof. mention last quarter that it was indeed a common play.
There are a billion of them in Greek and Latin literature, but that one stands out as one of the most interesting. Other Classics Dopers can expound on them better than I can anyways.
僕はうなぎです。 Boku ha, unagi desu. By itself, this means “I am an eel,” but in context it almost certainly means “I will order the eel,” like in a restaurant. Tee hee
And for Frylock’s post/question.
The second sentence is also technically ‘shou ga nai,’ but in conversation it can be shortened and sound like sho.
Hmmmmm… I’m not a Japanese person, and my grammatical knowledge is not perfect, but here’s how I would take that sentence on.
First off, there are two or three things I would change right off the bat to make it more understandable. I would write "Ankara kara kuru (da) kara, karai’n da. n or no da both work. My translation would be: “Because it comes from Ankara, it’s spicy”
I think the problem Japanese people are having in understanding it is because the kara is ambigous and because of the absence of “n/no da”. ‘no da’ has many functions, but a common one is a form of showing explanation, or re-inforcing a roughly causal relationship. ‘xxxx kara yyyy no da,’ is a common sentence construction. For example, “asagohan ha nakatta kara tabetai’n da yo!” = “because i didn’t have breakfast, i want to eat now!” The above, and kara without kuru in that sentence could cause troubles. “ankara kara dakara” could be heard as “because it’s Ankara ??? it is” Adding kuru should fix the problem. I admit understanding your sentence in its first version, but that’s because we’ve both probably been taught Japanese in a similar fashion. I hope I made that somewhat clear ^^;;;;
Better probably, but would have the same problem as above regarding the ambigous kara. Japanese is a context-heavy language so this sentence would probably be fine in a situation where you’re talking about food from Ankara, but in a pun for the masses it would probably not cut the mustard. shou ga nai ne
Funny being a relative term here. Puns are funny / stupid depending on their simplicity vs. the linguistic level of the recipient. Most kindergarten children and beginning speakers of Japanese will be amused. It would certainly be disappointing to expect adults to find puns on this level to be highly amusing.
One pun I learned when I was first over here to asking children “kaeru no?” “Are you going home?” and “Are you a frog?.”
While “kara dakara” is not grammatically incorrect per se, this sentence would not normally be used by a native.
Your problem is with “kara,” which typically takes a more literal meaning in Japanese and does not always have an implied meaning of “and thus shares similar properties of others from the same place.” At the risk of perpetrating stereotypes, the following could be easily followed in English but a literal translation into Japanese would not work.
A. Damn, your friend drinks a lot of beer.
B. Of course, he’s from Australia.
In Japanese you would more typically say “becasue he’s an Australian.” “オーストリア人だから”
から・だから can be used as “since; because; owing”
東大出だからといって有能だとは限らない. A man is not necessarily competent simply because he graduated from Tokyo University.
Note that this would not be東大から、だから.
Our friendly punster did enjoy your joke, but agreed that it didn’t work.
However, he suggested an alternative, which would take some work to get into a punch line.
アンカラからだから、空だ。It empty because it (a package or box, etc.) is from Ankara. You would need to find a joke which sets this up, maybe along the lines that Turkish Postal workers regularly steal everything. I can’t imagine this would make you popular in the Mideast, but you can’t have your pun and eat it too.
*Translation is “I love you”, but “lief” sounds a lot like the English word “leaf”, so if you say it with the English pronunciation and a little bit of a nod and a wink, the joke becomes a little dirtier…
For those who can’t read kanji, this sentence says Ankara kara dakara kara da.
For the newly coined joke:
There’s this family which makes famous carpets. The father lives in Ankara and creates master pieces. Unfortunately, he’s getting old and sometimes forgets to include the work in the shipping box. The son lives in Istanbul and, while still not up to his father’s skill never forgets to ship you your rug. The family won’t let you specify who makes the carpet.
You’ve ordered your piece, and finally the shipping carton arives. You open it with great anticipation but are disappointed because it’s (insert above punchline here.)
Not the best, but look at what material I had to work with.
An Englishman is dining in a French restaurant when he spots that the Frenchman at the next table is about to tuck into a large bowl of thick soup, oblivious to the presence of a very large fly. So dredging up his schoolboy French, he leans over and says <Pardon, m’sieur, mais il y a un mouche en votre potage>. The Frenchman looks and smiles gratefully, but politely corrects the Englishman: <Merci! Mais ce n’est pas un mouche, c’est une mouche>. To which the Englishman can only stammer: “Bloody hell, you’ve got good eyesight!”.
Marina Yaguello once published a popular introduction to linguistics entitled Catalogue des idées reçues sur la langue. This can mean either “Catalogue of preconceived notions on language” or “Catalogue of ideas ‘received on the tongue’” (accepted unquestioningly).
Just an observation: I find the German puns the easiest to understand as puns in the English sense, and the funniest. Spanish and Portuguese are easy to understand as puns, but must require a different sense of humor.
Oh, and when I say “easy to understand,” I mean that I understand them only by reading the translations. I’m as mono-linguistic as they come.
