Telling and Understanding jokes in English
Of course jokes work best when you don’t have to explain them, but for non-native speakers learning humor and understanding it presents big challenges. We did a short exercise where they had to think of a joke, translate it into English, practice telling it, and then tell it to the class and try to explain it, if it was not understood. Of course it led to lots of discussion about cultural differences, what is funny and what is rude, when the line is crossed, what political correctness means in different cultures, etc. A short lesson turned into a long philosophical one that spilled over into our lunch conversations. Off the top of my head I can only remember one of the jokes a student told.
What is the difference between an American recipe and a Traban?
You can at least give away a Traban.
A Traban is a very bad Russian car.
This led to discussions about food, my memories of similar jokes but about the Yugo in the US, and stereotypes. BTW, this was told by a student who had traveled to the US quite a few times and did not have ill feelings toward Americans, it was very funny in spirit.
I’ve never been to a movie in France, but from things I’ve heard from those who have, you can easily see the difference in the way some situations are viewed. Some things at which Americans laugh are regarded as un-funny by the French and vice-versa. Just watching the audience can be the most amusing aspect of going to a movie in France (other countries also, I’m certain).
Not just in comedy, sex scenes, drug use, endings, there are very real differences in how each view films.
I’m really enjoying reading about your impressions of the English camp, as well as many other stories on your blog. It’s an amusing story you wrote here. Just a small correction: a “Traban” is actually a “Trabant”. I guess, “traban” is a french version as they like to skip the end letters. And it is a very bad East German car (not Russian!)
By the way, the Germans have a lot of jokes about the Trabant.
A very bad Russian car is called “Zaporozhetz”. Could also fit in your joke.
Katerina
I thought of you when the student told the joke, I was going to remember to tell it to you. Now I don’t have to. Do the Russians have jokes about the Zaprohetz? Americans had lots of jokes about the Yugo, from the former Yugoslavia. I like jokes about American cars.
What does FORD stand for?
fixed often rarely driven
found on road dead
There are lots of jokes about the Zaporozhetz. It’s usually about that the Zaporozhetz is very small, breaks down often, is slow (maximum speed it could reach was 80 - 120 km/h, depending on a model) an so on. I couldn’t remember any jokes, so I searched in Internet. Here are some I found:
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Why doesn’t a Zaporozhets come with a radio? Because its so small
that your knees are generally pressed against your ears, can’t hear the radio anyways.
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A Zaporozhets — was travelling along the Chicago-New York freeway. After a while it broke down. A Buick stopped, and took it on tow. Just at this moment a Ford overtook the Buick. Automatically, the driver of the Buick accelerated. The two cars raced at eighty, ninety, then a hundred miles an hour… The Zaporozhets bobbed along behind on the tow rope jerkily sounding its horn at the Buick to make it stop, because the Zaporozhets was all but falling apart.
The next morning there was a paragraph in the Soviet papers: ‘Yesterday a Buick and a Ford were racing at a hundred miles an hour on the Chicago-New York freeway. Just behind them raced a Soviet Zaporozhets blowing its horn furiously, to get them to give way.’
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A new Russian and an old man lay injured side-by-side in an emergency room:
— How did you get here, old fella?
— I had an old Zaporozhets car, and I set the war-trophy Messerschmitt jet engine on it. While driving on a highway, I saw a Ferrari ahead and tried to overtake it. The speed was too high and I crashed myself into a tree. And how did you get here?
— I was driving my Ferrari when I saw a Zaporozhets overtaking me. I concluded, that my car might be broken and that it was actually standing still. So I opened the door and walked out…
(A new Russian is a nouveau-riche, arrogant and poorly educated post-perestroika businessmen and usually a gangster.)
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Katerina, those were really funny. Aren’t all businessmen gangsters though?
Yeh, this might be right.