Give me your wordplay and obscure culture references, I love them all.
[off topic?]
Yiddish. Does not translate to Christian.
Old man goes to the same lunch counter every day and orders the exact same meal every time. Tuna fish salad on rye toast and tomato soup.
One day he walks in and orders his meal. The waiter brings it.
“Waiter, I want you to try this soup.”
“I’m sorry sir, I’ll get you a different bowl.”
“No, I want you to try this soup!”
“I’ll get the manager.”
“No, I want you to try this soup!”
This goes on for five minutes and finally the waiter gives up.
“Okay, I’ll try the soup. Where’s the spoon?”
“Aha!”
What really translates here for me is how exhausting customers can be.
If the server forgot to bring a spoon you could have just said that five minutes ago while the soup was still hot.
I didn’t know this joke had Yiddish origins. Funnily enough, it was told to me by my Jewish grandmother when she was explaining in a convoluted way that I should sweep before mopping 🤣.
One time, between classes we got on the topic of ethnic humor. The guy I told the joke to looked at me like I was insane, but the Russian immigrant woman who overheard it laughed. Someone else told me that Southern US folks would get it.
This works better when spoken with the appropriate inflections.
Nu?
I mean, Christians eat soup, too.
It just comes from cans instead of waiters.
Spanish:
–Señor, mi mamá quiere saber qué vende.
–Dile a tu mamá que ceviche.
English:
–Mister, my mom wants to know what are you selling.
–Tell to your mom that ceviche.
Ceviche is, well, ceviche. In north west of México, we often say “vichi” to say “nude”. “vicharse” would be “get naked”, so “Dile a tu mamá que ceviche” can be a pun for “dile a tu mamá que se viche” (Tell to your mom that get naked)
Que le dijo un pez a otro pez?
Nada!What did one fish say to the other? Nothing(/Swim)!
Un león comió jabón. Ahora, es puma/espuma.
I get it. The spanish wordt for swimming is “nadar”, which sounds almost the same. Seems like DuoLingo isn’t completely useless after all.
Not a spanish speaker but isn’t ‘nada’ also swim, as in a command to?
Imperative conjugation of nadar is nada
Una estrella estrellada
An Ulster Scots one:
“Ballymena mawn went uptae glens in Canadae yin dae”
“An he saa tae yer man in the pub: What’s that thaer on tha wall?”
"An the publickan saa “Why, That’s a moose”
"Ballymena man saa: “Aye? That a moose? Sure, if thats a moose then yer cats must be wile big!” "
As a Canadian in Scotland, this is the number one joke I’m told by Scots. Closely followed by the statement “I’ve a (cousin/sister/brother/uncle/auntie etc) in Canada.” I swear, it’s probably 1 in 3 Scots with family in Canada.
Spanish wordplay: ¿Por qué está feliz la escoba? Porque siempre barriendo.
Translation: Why is the broom happy? Because it’s always sweeping (barriendo = sweeping, sounds like va riendo = goes around laughing)
El pan está blando ¿Y qué dice?
Oye, esa oración no tiene sen—ooooooh. 🙈
“Was ist der Unterschied zwischen Schach und Billard?” - “Beim Schach hat man den Kö nich.”
“What’s the difference between chess and billiards?” - Answer is a pun, can mean both “In chess, you have the king.” and “In chess, you don’t have the cue.” Doesn’t translate at all.
「野菜を食べやさい！」
I think a close-enough approximation (which isn’t close at all) would be “eat your veggies, peas.”
Is -やさい just a cheeky pun off of -なさい?
>:]
In the garden, there are two chickens.
庭には、鶏が二羽いる。
I almost forgot about that one!
English is squeezing the last scraps of Japanese out of me. :(
5回も誤解した
life is like a cucumber, sometime in your hand sometime in your ass. Arabic/Sudanese dialect
el eisha zey el ajoura, mara fi eedak, mara fi teezahk
……
what am i doing with my life 🙈
Who’s the stinkiest Norse god? Gar-loki
Works better in Dutch, I swear
3 students share an apartment and 2 of them study a lot but the third spends most his nights partying. The 2 studious housemates decide to pull a prank on him, and one night when he comes home they are waiting for him next to the bedroom door wearing white sheets. One of the friends says ‘welcome friend, I am Peter!’. The other says ‘welcome friend, I am Paul’. The drunk house mate looks at them and says ‘Colleagues! would you mind stepping aside? I am Lazarus!’
yeah, that doesn’t translate… in Dutch, the names refer to St peter and St Paul and both end in -us as well: Petrus and Paulus. Also, ‘being Lazarus’ means being very drunk.
Får får inte får. Får får lamm.
sheeps don’t get sheeps. Sheeps get lambs.
Får = sheep/to get
var tog vägen vägen? Ute på en åker och åker
where did the road go? Out in a field and driving
“Tog vägen” = literally “took the road”, meaning “where did it go”, sort of. And åker = driving and a farm field.
I got a t-shirt from the Swedish Society for People with Anxiety. It came with a print on the chest.
“print on the chest” would be “tryck för/på/över bröstet” having the double meaning “preassure over the chest”.
Then there are endless of jokes from Gothenburg which all do not translate.
Who is faster, Eminem or Taylor Swift? Eminem, he is a rapper
“rapper” in swedish is “rappare”, meaning also “faster”.
In stockholm a snake escaped the zoo and has not been found. The zoo is missing him a lot
The last bit in swedish would be “saknaden är enorm”, “saknad” being the emotion of missing someone, “enorm” being large/a lot/great. But also enorm=en-orm=a-snake.
From Danish: You can make a call from Ringsted to Thisted but you can’t pee from Thisted to Ringsted.
For those curious, Ringsted and Thisted are Danish cities. “Ring”, like in English, is the sound a phone makes when you make a call, and in Danish we say that we “ring” someone, when we call them. “This” is pronounced like the Danish word “tis”, which means pee.
Another danish one: How do you make a goldfish laugh?
You put it in spring water.
What’s the most dangerous brick? A crocodile
¿Que hace el pez?
Nada.
Dutch: Er liep een man in de woestijn en die vond een kameel, maar de kameel vond van niet.
English: A man was walking in the desert and he found a camel, but the camel found he hadn’t.
I don’t know, maybe it works in English too.
German joke with word play: " ‘Nur noch schnell einen runter holen, dann ist Mittag’ - Karl Heinz (Flackschütze)"
Finland and sweden were having a competition about which language is the most beautiful. Finland was let to choose the sentence and “saari, saari, heinäsaari, heinäsaaren neito”. In swedish its “Ö, ö, hö ö, hö ö mö”
(in english its “island, island, grassy island, grassy island’s maiden”)
