# Tell me a non-english joke

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-a-non-english-joke/455715>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 8, 2008, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-a-non-english-joke/455715 "2008-07-08T17:07:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-a-non-english-joke/455715/21 "2008-07-09T12:33:10Z")

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In the original the third guy is Basque and the word he “reads” is _irrintzi_. With my apologies to phonics and to our linguists who can write this a lot more accuratedly than I can 🙂

Three experts are chatting, during a linguistics convention. The keynote speaker has posited that a language is more complex the more its spelling differs from its phonetics, and these three guys agree. The Englishman says “well, English is the more complex of European languages, as we write Shakespeare but say _Shéikspir_.” There’s some nodding, then a Frenchman pipes up “ah, but dis is nozink! In French, we write au revoir but say _ogvuá_!” More heads nod, and then this third guy says “bah! You ist such, such wusses! Why, where I come from, we write yodel and say  
_AIAIAIAIAIIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!_”

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**Author:** ![grimpixie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecb155/32.png) [@grimpixie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grimpixie)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-a-non-english-joke/455715/22 "2008-07-09T12:46:14Z")

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An Afrikaans Joke:

Van der Merwe (stock character for all South African jokes) has a flat tyre on his bakkie (Ute/Pickup/truck) and is busy changing the tyre by the side of the road when a ministerial convoy rumbles past and covers him in dust. Enraged Van leaps to his feet and shouts “_Vok jou_\*!!” at the departing vehicles. To his amazement, the convoy screeches to a halt and reverses - the minister’s window winds down and (_insert hated politician of the day here_ - when I heard it, it was Pik Botha) pokes his head out. “How dare you speak to me like that? Don’t you know who I am?” Van doffs his cap and says, “Sorry, sir, I didn’t see who it was - _Vok U_\*\*!!”

Grim

- Translation - F\*ck you  
\*\* Translation - as above, but using the respectful version of the work you.

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**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2008, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-a-non-english-joke/455715/23 "2008-07-09T13:00:47Z")

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When I was in high school a friend and I used to ride our bikes across town to the National Library each Friday. There, amongst other things, we found Freud’s _Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious_. What entranced us was that most of the jokes were puns and, as the book was in English, the plain text reading was useless.

Our favourite was, “In his haste to write the prescription the Indian doctor has made a mistake.” In German it was something like, “Wie du dem Inder hast verschrieben, in der Hast verschrieben.”

We used to just drop the English version into conversations and all the people in the know would break out in laughter. Everyone else would be baffled.

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