BS: Jokes people don't get

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 06 Mar 13 - 04:12 PM

Sorry, wasn't logged in.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Mar 13 - 04:05 PM

Funex ( more two Ronnies madness)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkWMcRlE1mQ

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: G-Force
Date: 06 Mar 13 - 02:45 PM

. . . CDBD eyes.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Mar 13 - 02:32 PM

L O L O
A Q I C...

Bert... I am JUST cognizant in BritSpeak to get that one. We almost never hear "Q" here, so it is mainly thru Mudcat that it registers.

ABCD goldfish
LMNO goldfish
OSAR goldfish

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Mo the caller
Date: 06 Mar 13 - 01:53 PM

Memories from childrens parties in my youth - the game "the moon is round"
We'd sit in a circle,and pass round a pointer, each had to recite in turn, with suitable actions "the moon is round, it has 2 eyes a nose and a mouth can you do this?" And those in the know would say yes or no. Gradually more and more 'got' it and the actions would get more exagerated.

Then there was the riddle
If the B mt put:
If the B. putting :

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Kenny B (inactive)
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 05:14 PM

Or i have just returned from the Punic wars with the sweet smell of suksex or Soixant Niff as the more bilingual might say


Bi4 now

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Kenny B (inactive)
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 05:11 PM

I found i could finally post when i got a rount tuit

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 05:03 PM

Good one ~~ but won't work in an American accent, I suspect.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: frogprince
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 01:49 PM

Mrrzy, I kinda surprised myself by catching that one, at least after just a momentary blink.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Mrrzy
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 12:48 PM

Then there was this joke my dad used to tell to great silence, except for once when one person got it.

An eagle was flying high in the sky when he met a soul. Ah, Eagle, said the soul by way of greeting. The eagle, being a discreet bird, said nothing.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Jeri
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 12:07 PM

Spoiler:
For those who can't work it out: "un petit, d'un petit", but don't do it until you've had somebody try reading it to you in a fakey French accent.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Bert
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 11:46 AM

Another Brit one for you Bill.

L O L O
A Q I C
I 8 2 Q
B 4 I P

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 11:39 AM

I have no idea how to sound out French, so I'll have to wait.


Bert... MY version was on a card on the wall of my Psychology professor in college in 1957... in the US, of course. Them lorez am BritLatin.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Mrrzy
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 11:11 AM

I don't get it yet, Jeri, either!

Then there's the old standard Ladle Rat Rotten Hut for the monolingual Americans.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: frogprince
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 11:01 AM

Yo, Jeri; ya, finally, finally, last evening it clicked for me. I was pretty sure it was just about the flow of sound, but I had very little idea of how a lot of it really should sound in French.

I took it along to the local Tim's where we hang out most mornings, and asked if anybody could read French. No takers today, but someone said that one woman who does will probably be there tomorrow, so will see if I can get her to read it aloud for them, & see who catches on first.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Jeri
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 10:31 AM

Frogprince, you get it yet?

We hear what we expect to hear. Some Americans don't get irony, but then it's really easy for an American who uses it to not be understood by a Brit who doesn't expect an American to do such a thing.

I had a friend I'm convinced thought it was the funniest thing in the world to tell people a "joke" that just wasn't funny, and then watch them try to get it. "It's funny because it's not funny? OK, well, whatever..."

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: wysiwyg
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 10:06 AM

CROSS-CULTURAL TIP

We are WIRED to "hear" other cultures, and it's easy enough to pick up an ear for another culture's speech. Just download a free audiobook at Librivox read by a person from another culture and you can soon make most of it out if you relax and don't try too hard. THEN you can get in the door in conversation to sort out the confusions!

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 01:20 AM

100

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Bugsy
Date: 05 Mar 13 - 12:15 AM

Hang in there Kiddo, sending you lots of love and big hugs.

Cheers

bugsy

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Bert
Date: 04 Mar 13 - 07:11 PM

The way I heard it Bill was

Der dago
forte lorez indero
demaint lorez demiz trux
fulla couzan enzen dux

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: GUEST,DrWord
Date: 04 Mar 13 - 05:49 PM

To {From: GUEST
Date: 03 Mar 13 - 11:57 AM}
   Laugh myself sick!!!!! the un petit d'un petit is simply priceless. glad this thread made your day, and that you posted this!
keep on pickin' [& grinnin']
dennis

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: frogprince
Date: 04 Mar 13 - 03:04 PM

...characterS...

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: frogprince
Date: 04 Mar 13 - 03:02 PM

It reminds me of the character in Pogo singing Christmas carols.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 04 Mar 13 - 01:00 PM

Un petit d'un petit! Great! LOL!

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Mar 13 - 12:42 PM

Oh sibili, si ergo,
fortibuses in ero.
Nobili, demis trux.
Sowatis enum?
Cowsendux.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Ron Davies
Date: 04 Mar 13 - 12:22 PM

"troubled by British sarcasm".   That's right, we Colonials have no concept of sarcasm.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Mar 13 - 11:46 AM

There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary, and those who don't.

I have Mots D'Heures, Gousses, Rames where Un Petit d'Un Petit is from, Guest.

(And, I had to look up Afferbeck Lauder.)

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: gnu
Date: 04 Mar 13 - 11:38 AM

Great stuff!

Froggy... this is gonna sound tres odd but just trust me. Try reading it without too much thought put into understanding it while at the same time... seriously... trying to imitate a French accent. No... I AIN'T shittin ya. Try it.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 04 Mar 13 - 09:59 AM

Or this one, which requires a bit more numeracy than the last:

Two mathematicians are in a restaurant, arguing. The first mathematician is complaining that the average citizen knows *nothing* about maths, people are idiots who don't even know how to check their change these days, and the world is generally going to hell in a handbasket.

The second mathematician is objecting, telling his friend that the situation isn't that bad, and warning him not to underestimate the average citizen's mathematical knowledge.

After much argument, the first mathematician staggers off to the toilet. The second mathematician calls the tired-looking young waitress over.

"How can I help you, sir?"

He hands her £20. "I'd like to play a little joke on my friend when he gets back. I'm going to ask you a question. When you answer, I want you to answer, 'x squared.' Can you do that for me?"

"Yes, sir, whatever."

After a few minutes, the first mathematician returns and sits down. The second mathematician says, "Look, I'll *show* you that the average citizen knows more about maths than you think they do." He waves the waitress over.

"Yes gentlemen, what can I do for you?"

"I just have a simple question for you, young lady. Can you tell me what the answer to the integral of 2x dx is?"

The waitress scrunches up her face: "er, I think so... it's… x squared."

The second mathematician leans back in his chair, looks at his friend, and smiles smugly.

Then the waitress, walking away, calls over her shoulder, "Plus a constant."




You either get that or you don't. Without some basic calculus, you just won't.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 04 Mar 13 - 09:56 AM

Then there are jokes where you need a cetain level of knowledge to "get" them:

If you have a pizza with radius z and thickness a, it's volume is pizza.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: frogprince
Date: 03 Mar 13 - 11:29 PM

I may be poo out of luck because I'm not at all sure just how to pronounce it.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Jeri
Date: 03 Mar 13 - 05:15 PM

Between gnu and Mo, I got it. It's one of those things that, once you crack it, you get the the whole thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Jeri
Date: 03 Mar 13 - 05:06 PM

Gnu, thanks. That was enough of a hint for me to get the first line. And the second. Now I have to try to figure out the rest.

It one doesn't get it, it might work better to read it aloud to someone else who is NOT reading the text. They'd be better able to tell you what you just said. Works with test scoring when the kids may be writing phonetically, but you've read the thing 10 times and it still doesn't make sense.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Mo the caller
Date: 03 Mar 13 - 04:53 PM

Sounds a bit scrambled to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: gnu
Date: 03 Mar 13 - 01:20 PM

HAHAHAHAA.... HAD TO READ THE POEM TWICE AND CAUGHT IT THE SECOND TIME I READ THE FIRST LINE. oops... soooory

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Mar 13 - 11:57 AM

I am supremely sorry that I only found this wonderful thread months too late. :(

I have really enjoyed it along with the posted YouTube links this morning. I has made my day.

So now I want to make a belated contribution - the absolutely brilliant book "Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The D'Antin Manuscript" published in 1967. I enjoyed it so much that I bought a copy. I was introduced to this without any explanation and had to figure it out for myself, which made it it even more hilarious when I did. So perhaps I should not give away the secret. But my reaction when I did twig it was "You rotters!"

I quote the first poem in this recently unearthed old-French collection of verses:

Un petit d'un petit
S'étonne aux Halles
Un petit d'un petit
Ah! degrés te fallent
Indolent qui ne sort cesse
Indolent qui ne se mène
Qu'importe un petit d'un petit
Tout Gai de Reguennes.

I handed this deadpan to a bilingual French-Canadian and after she read it and looked puzzled I said "Read it aloud". And then she killed herself laughing too.

If anyone is interested I'll give you the clue. I recognize that we live in a "gotta know now or we can't be bothered" world. But it goes against the grain to give you a clue before you've had a go at it.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 04 Aug 12 - 02:19 PM

Teaching, and posting to Mudcat, convinces me absolutely that a very large portion of the population (maybe most of it) doesn't "get" verbal irony, even when their favorite mode of argument is sarcasm.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Aug 12 - 02:00 PM

What's yellow and highly explosive ?















Bananamite.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 04 Aug 12 - 01:47 PM

I'm afraid my husband, being from West Africa, doesn't get many of my jokes. He takes everything literally. For instance, the other day we were looking at the Jobcentreplus site, and I happened to remark, "Well, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." He was amazed, and replied, "But monkeys can't be trained to do cleaning jobs ... can they?" I also said, "Even our cat Smoky knows you mustn't put plastic things in the green bin." And he replied, "He wouldn't be able to lift the lid, because it's too tall for him." I gave up.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 04 Aug 12 - 07:35 AM

Many jokes, including most of the above, can be "got" by searching the web. It may be too late for laughing then, but at least in written communication you can pretend to be witty. (As we saw, the main fun/abuse is often not the joke itself but the fact that some people don't get it.)

Wikipedia even informs us that "Pink elephants exist in nature, as albino elephants can be pink", and that Jack London coined the phrase. I guess its success in Britain was influenced by Cockney "being elephant's" (... trunk, to rhyme with "drunk").

Another useful (albeit unreliable) source is Urban Dictionary.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: gnu
Date: 04 Aug 12 - 05:49 AM

Nick... GREAT joke!

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 03 Aug 12 - 08:57 PM

here's one for The Americans and anyone else under 50 to struggle 'getting'...



What's Greek and plays clarinet ?







Moussaka Bilk





[Sorry, it just popped into my head over dinner.
I fear I may have made that one up myself,
in which case I accept full blame
for unleashing a very shite joke on the world...]

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Aug 12 - 07:59 PM

Well done. I don't get that one.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Nick
Date: 03 Aug 12 - 07:16 PM

Two pink elephants walk into a pub at twenty to six in the evening and the barman says "Sorry lads he's not in yet"

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 02 Aug 12 - 09:09 PM

So Australians pronounce "alphabetical" as "afferbeckel"?

I'd think "affabay(d)ickil" would be more like it.

And I'd think Cockneys would say "ahfabayikoo."

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: framus
Date: 02 Aug 12 - 08:21 PM

PROFESSOR Stanley Unwin, p leeese. He wasn't trying to have a joke at anybody's expense,just fecking about with our perception of language. And damn good he was!

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: Little Robyn
Date: 02 Aug 12 - 07:52 AM

Colonials can enjoy Stanley Unwin
even if he's a bit strange. I like Goldiloppers.
Robyn

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: PHJim
Date: 02 Aug 12 - 12:17 AM

I saw these instructions for speaking like a Newfoundlander written on a kitchen wall in St. John's:

Whale   Oil   Beef    Hooked.

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: GUEST,Ebor_Fiddler
Date: 01 Aug 12 - 05:59 PM

Or "What's the time Eccles?"

Subject: RE: BS: Jokes people don't get
From: GUEST,Ebor_Fiddler
Date: 01 Aug 12 - 05:56 PM

My favourite is the old Punch Cartoon, showing the noses of two hippopotemoi (Greek plural here, you'll notice, not Latin)sticking out of the water and one is saying "I keep thinking it's Tuesday".