bilingual puns
retrosorter
cross a condom with a Torah?
Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah scroll.)
This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
mike.j...@gmail.com
retrosorter wrote:
> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
I sure hope not!
John Seal
> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
Like the one about the snail automobile race? When the snail with the
letter S painted on his car pulled ahead, spectators exclaimed "Look at
that S car go!"
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
J. Joyce, /Finnegans Wake/, or so I'm told.
V. Nabokov, passim. "Van, /je suis sur la verge/ (Blanche again) of a
revolting amorous adventure." (/Ada/, Part Two, Chapter 1, p. 334. A
character named Blanche had given a memorable speech in Franglais.)
Nobody likes the Spanglish jokes I've heard here in New Mexico:
A pachuco is cruising in his lowrider and sees a pretty girl from
behind. He opens the window and calls out, "Hop on, esa!"
She says, "How did you know I'm Japanese?"
How do you spell socks?
S-o-c-k-s.
¡Eso sí que es!
Apologies to a.u.e.-ers and former a.u.s.-ers who have suffered through
those last two before.
Are explanations in order? "Verge" is French for penis. "Esa",
literally "that", is a friendly pachuco address to a girl or
woman--feminine of "ese", from the greeting "¡Ese bato!", "that guy!"
"Japonesa" is Spanish for a female Japanese. The last punchline is
Spanish that I can't parse for something like "That's just what it is!"
--
Jerry Friedman
--
Jerry Friedman
Turenne
A story I was told concerned an englishman whose wife died in France
where they were living. As he needed a black hat for the funeral, he
went to a hatters and asked for 'un capeau noir'. On being told that
they didn't have any 'capeaux noir' he was directed to the pharmacy.
Arriving at the pharmacists he asked again for 'un capeau noir' and
when the pharmacist said sorry they only had them in clear, red and
blue, asked why he wanted a capeau noir, to which the englishman
answered, 'parce que ma femme est mort'.The pharmacist held up his
hands and exclaimed, 'aah, quelle finesse!'
Richard Lichten
HVS
If you're sick, eat garlic: garlic's good for what ails you.
--
Cheers, Harvey
Canadian and British English, indiscriminately mixed
For e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van
Jitze Couperus
wrote:
An Anglo-Dutch author was famous (in Holland anyway) for his
bilingual puns. His non de plume was John O'Mill (Jan van der Meulen)
Three that I can remember:
My will is wet
Said Winifred
And pulled her husband into bed.
I bought three pots the other day
I bought them for a prikkie
A pot for here
A pot for there
And a little pot for Dickie
A terrible infant, called Peter
Sprinkled his bed with a gieter
His father got woost,
Took half of a cnoost,
And gave him a pack on his meter
Too hard to explain - if you are fluent in Dutch and its idioms,
they'll cause a chuckle however. But just to give you some
idea -
Moeders "wil is wet" - Mothers will (desire) is the law
"Pot for dickie" - a pun on potverdikkie - a severely bowdlerised
version of a common Dutch oath/expletive
A "pack on his meter" - a pun on pak op zijn mieter - a hiding.
One of the books he wrote was titled "Literary Larycook" itself
a subtle pun. Larycook --> Lariekoek = nonsense.
Jitze
Don Phillipson
news:1169588771.8...@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com...
< < . . . an englishman whose wife died in France
where they were living. As he needed a black hat for the funeral, he
went to a hatters and asked for 'un capeau noir'. On being told that
they didn't have any 'capeaux noir' he was directed to the pharmacy.
Arriving at the pharmacists he asked again for 'un capeau noir' and
when the pharmacist said sorry they only had them in clear, red and
blue, asked why he wanted a capeau noir, to which the englishman
answered, 'parce que ma femme est mort'.The pharmacist held up his
hands and exclaimed, 'aah, quelle finesse!' > >
Next time you tell the story, remember it is
CAPOTE not CAPEAU. It goes better thus.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Turenne
Thanks, someone *told* me the story, so that's how I assumed it was
spelt. It was a long time ago and I was never much good at French..
Richard Lichten
R H Draney
>
>a subtle pun. Larycook --> Lariekoek = nonsense.
Someone once asked Nicklaus Wirth how his surname should be pronounced...he
answered "if you call me by name, it's Veert; if you call me by value, it's
Worth"....
I've been using this picture as a graphic .sig on eBay, where such things are
encouraged:
http://members.cox.net/bagelhenge/pipasig.jpg
....r
--
"You got Schadenfreude on my Weltanschauung!"
"You got Weltanschauung in my Schadenfreude!"
HVS
> Jitze Couperus filted:
>>
>> On 23 Jan 2007 12:08:27 -0800, "retrosorter"
>> <hric...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>>
>>> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual
>>> puns.
>>
>> One of the books he wrote was titled "Literary Larycook" itself
>> a subtle pun. Larycook --> Lariekoek = nonsense.
>
> Someone once asked Nicklaus Wirth how his surname should be
> pronounced...he answered "if you call me by name, it's Veert; if
> you call me by value, it's Worth"....
Guy goes to Hawaii, and asks a native if he should say "ha-wah-ee" or
"ha-vah-ee".
The guy tells him "It's ha-vah-ee".
He says "Thank you".
The guy say "You're velcome".
--
Cheers, Harvey
....ah, the old ones....
Arfur Million
news:1169582907....@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Fench food never has two eggs in it, because one egg is always un oeuf.
That's enough,
Arfur
Evan Kirshenbaum
> "retrosorter" <hric...@sympatico.ca> wrote
>> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
>>
>
> Fench food never has two eggs in it, because one egg is always un
> oeuf.
One Scottish(?) soldier talking to another in France: If you want an
egg, just go to the farmhouse, knock on the door and ask for an "oof".
If you want twa eggs, ask for twa oofs. The stupid biddy'll give you
three, and you give one back.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |I believe there are more instances
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |of the abridgment of the freedom of
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |the people by gradual and silent
|encroachments of those in power
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |than by violent and sudden
(650)857-7572 |usurpations.
| James Madison
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Someone once asked Nicklaus Wirth how his surname should be
> pronounced...he answered "if you call me by name, it's Veert; if you
> call me by value, it's Worth"....
I think he himself told the joke pretty much any time he gave a talk.
When I heard it, it was "Europeans call me by name, /'niklaUs 'virt/,
and Americans call me by value, /'nIk@lz wRT/ (nickle's worth)".
For what it's worth, I think of him as /'nIk(@)lIs 'wRT/, even though
I know better.
For the other level of the joke, you have to know that Wirth's
specialty was/is programming language design, and "call by name" and
"call by value" are the names of two mechanisms for passing parameters
to functions.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If the human brain were so simple
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |That we could understand it,
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |We would be so simple
|That we couldn't.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Robert Lieblich
>
> R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> writes:
>
> > Someone once asked Nicklaus Wirth how his surname should be
> > pronounced...he answered "if you call me by name, it's Veert; if you
> > call me by value, it's Worth"....
>
> I think he himself told the joke pretty much any time he gave a talk.
> When I heard it, it was "Europeans call me by name, /'niklaUs 'virt/,
> and Americans call me by value, /'nIk@lz wRT/ (nickle's worth)".
Another surname joke has a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe
assigned the name, in the US, of Sean Ferguson. His original name was
so hard to pronounce in English that on arrival at Ellis Island he
picked out a substitute. But when he was asked for his name he
couldn't remember the substitute, so he blurted out "Schoen
Fergessen." ("I've forgotten.") Voila! Sean Ferguson.
Then there was Sam Ting. This fellow was in line behind his cousin.
They had the same name. The first cousin concluded his business, and
the second cousin stepped up to the table. "What's your name" he was
asked, and he decided to say it was the same as his cousin's. Voila!
Sam Ting.
Hey -- no one said they had to be good puns.
--
Bob Lieblich
Whose grandfather made it through with name unscathed
Jitze Couperus
wrote:
>A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
The name of the musical "Oh Calcutta" is allgedly a Franco-English
pun that cannot be discussed in polite company. Not sure if this is
an urban myth or not - but the image used in many of the posters
and advertising materials for the musical would lend credence to this
idea. See for example:
http://www.ohcalcutta.it/assets/images/immagine_donna.jpg
Jitze
Joe Fineman
And goes out to celebrate New Year's Ivre. -- Ogden Nash
--
--- Joe Fineman jo...@verizon.net
||: If you pray to God to smite your enemies, Satan is your :||
||: god. :||
William
Three little french kittens went skating on thin ice... un deux trois
quatre cinq.
--
WH
Skitt
> Another surname joke has a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe
> assigned the name, in the US, of Sean Ferguson. His original name was
> so hard to pronounce in English that on arrival at Ellis Island he
> picked out a substitute. But when he was asked for his name he
> couldn't remember the substitute, so he blurted out "Schoen
> Fergessen." ("I've forgotten.") Voila! Sean Ferguson.
Hmm. "Schon", I think. Or "shon".
--
Skitt
Enuff, already
Allan Adler
> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
I once had a dream in which Hirzebruch was giving a talk about
fibre bundles (Faeserbundel). At one point, he considered a particular
example in which he started with a vector bundle with metric and removed
its unit ball bundle (a standard construction) and described this operation
as a Faesectomy.
Sorry it isn't more polished. It was a dream, after all.
--
Ignorantly,
Allan Adler <a...@zurich.csail.mit.edu>
* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and
* comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> "retrosorter" <hrich...@sympatico.ca> writes:
> > This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.I once had a dream in which Hirzebruch was giving a talk about
> fibre bundles (Faeserbundel). At one point, he considered a particular
> example in which he started with a vector bundle with metric and removed
> its unit ball bundle (a standard construction) and described this operation
> as a Faesectomy.
>
> Sorry it isn't more polished. It was a dream, after all.
A search for "vas deferens" will turn up a lot.
--
Jerry Friedman
Frank ess
Eether weigh, it's a monolingual pun in French, my ear.
--
Frank ess
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
[...]
> Another surname joke has a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe
> assigned the name, in the US, of Sean Ferguson. His original name
> was so hard to pronounce in English that on arrival at Ellis Island
> he picked out a substitute. But when he was asked for his name he
> couldn't remember the substitute, so he blurted out "Schoen
> Fergessen." ("I've forgotten.") Voila! Sean Ferguson.
Bob, I'm disappointed in you -- one of the wittiest posters in AUE --
because you told this *stupid* "joke" only schmucks consider funny.
And as a speaker of _a bisl yidish_ you should know how *stupid* this
non-joke is.
I've seen this *stupid* "joke" several times in various language
newsgroups and elsewhere and hate it with a passion -- because it's so
STUPID. Thus I'm going to kill it once and for all.
This idiotic "joke" doesn't work because the stressed syllables don't
match, and therefore you can't get from Yiddish "fargésn" to English
"Férguson" (é = stressed, as are the syllables in caps below):
Yiddish: "far-GES-n"
English: "FER-gu-son"
The jump from Yiddish "shoyn fargésn" = [I have] 'already forgotten'
to "Sean/Shawn Férguson" is too big, improbable, and therefore unfunny
and *stupid*.
Punishment for anyone who's witless enough to retell that *stupid*
joke will be swift, cruel and severe: That perpetrator will be locked
up for 24 hours in a small, windowless room with "Rancid Dipshit" and
"Heidi Hasenhirn."
~~~ Rey Aman ~~~
Witz-Polizei
mb
On Jan 23, 5:18 pm, couperus-eschew-t...@znet.com
> The name of the musical "Oh Calcutta" is allgedly a Franco-English
> pun that cannot be discussed in polite company. Not sure if this is
> an urban myth or not - but the image used in many of the posters
> and advertising materials for the musical would lend credence to this
> idea.
Absolutely, it was consciously made for "Quel cul t'as".
But it's not bilingual. There is no English anywhere in it.
Steve Hayes
The satirist/comedian Pieter-Dirk Uys, or his alter ego Evita Bezuidenhout,
sometime ambassador to the independent homeland of Bapetikosweti, was
responsible for many.
One of my favourites was at the time of the new constitution that introduced
the tri-cameral parliament, and he was playing a putative coloured voter
reading an official document designed to test her understanding of the voting
process.
Maak 'n sin met die woord "fakulteit"
(Make a sentence with the word "faculty".)
Ek het fakulteit vir die new constitution
(I've got fuck-all time for the new constitution)
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Bob G
"Jaguar you?"
?Y que le contesto la zorra?
"I am sorry".
Oleg Lego
Interesting...
In the version I heard, a fellow walked into a dry cleaning place
called "Oly Jorgesson's", and asked a Chinese fellow behind the
counter if he could speak with the owner. Fellow answers that he is
the owner, and that his name is Oly Jorgesson. When asked how he came
to have that name, he said he was in the immigration line behind a
tall, blond fellow. When it came to his turn, he stepped up to the
counter, and was asked his name, he said "Sam Ting".
Oleg Lego
>retrosorter wrote:
>> A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
>> cross a condom with a Torah?
>>
>> Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah scroll.)
>>
>> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
>
>J. Joyce, /Finnegans Wake/, or so I'm told.
>
>V. Nabokov, passim. "Van, /je suis sur la verge/ (Blanche again) of a
>revolting amorous adventure." (/Ada/, Part Two, Chapter 1, p. 334. A
>character named Blanche had given a memorable speech in Franglais.)
>
>Nobody likes the Spanglish jokes I've heard here in New Mexico:
>
>A pachuco is cruising in his lowrider and sees a pretty girl from
>behind. He opens the window and calls out, "Hop on, esa!"
>
>She says, "How did you know I'm Japanese?"
>
>
>How do you spell socks?
>
>S-o-c-k-s.
>
>¡Eso sí que es!
TNSLPPTSO
(Tienes el pipi tieso)
rzed
news:1169582907....@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when
> you cross a condom with a Torah?
>
> Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah
> scroll.)
>
> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
>
>
This is a true -- though dull -- story: I once was searching
desperately for a pen to write down a phone number, but I couldn't
find one. Eventually, I gave up looking for the pen and just used a
pencil I'd found, and -- I swear it just came to me like *that* -- I
thought to myself "ce n'est pas la pen". Sometimes I just crack me
up.
Well, maybe you had to be there.
--
rzed
I wasn't actually smoking anything right at that moment. Really.
Peter Moylan
> A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
> cross a condom with a Torah?
>
> Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah
> scroll.)
>
> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
When we were first married my wife would open the window in the morning
and say "Lo, the morn!" Now she just says "Coup de grace."
--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain
eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer
receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses. The optusnet
address could disappear at any time.
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
>cross a condom with a Torah?
>
>Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah scroll.)
>
>This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
When looking for "yes, paarden" (Dutch-English pun) I found:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilingual_pun
There's also an English-Gronings pun (Gronings = Low-Saxon dialect
spoken in a northern province of the Netherlands):
http://www.moorsmagazine.com/onzinbak/grunengels.html
Explanation: "Kwaajt ouk naajt!" is Grunnings for what in Dutch could
be " 'k weet 't ook niet", meaning "I don't know either".
--
Ruud Harmsen - http://rudhar.com
DMZ: http://rudhar.com/index/whatsnew.htm
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
>cross a condom with a Torah?
>
>Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah scroll.)
>
>This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
http://www.webkim.nl/pivot/entry.php?uid=standard-1405
===
Dezelfde Engelsman rijdt een tiental kippen dood op het Groninger
platteland. De boer komt kwaad aanstormen (met waarschijnlijk een
hooivork in zijn hand). Engelsman: keep quiet!
Boer: wat kiep kwait? Wel 10 kiepen kwait!:’-D
===
(Dutch kip = chicken).
Jitze Couperus
Whoosh!
(The name of the musical "Oh Calcutta" is in what language?)
Jitze
athel...@yahoo
On Jan 23, 10:19 pm, "jerry_fried...@yahoo.com"
<jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> retrosorter wrote:
> > A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
> > cross a condom with a Torah?
>
> > Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah scroll.)
>
> > This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.J. Joyce, /Finnegans Wake/, or so I'm told.
>
> V. Nabokov, passim.
Right. You got there before me, but if the OP is interested in this
sort of thing then Nabokov's works are definitely the place to look. He
was fascinated by the problems of translating jokes, riddles etc.
between languages, and wrote extensively about it. (I'm told that
translators say that he was a much worse translator than he thought he
was, but I don't have an opinion about that.)
Nabokov gave a nice example of a pair of typographical errors that
translated with little loss of meaning between Russian and English,
involving the words "crown", "cow" and "crow". Something like a
newspaper publishing a story with "Crown" written as "Cow", followed
the next day by an apology saying "We regret the unfortunate reference
to 'the Cow' in yesterday's edition; this should of course have been
'the Crow'."
I've forgotten most of such little Russian as I ever knew, but I think
"crown" is "korona", "cow" I don't remember, but something similar, and
"crow" is "korova".
athel
Isabelle Cecchini
>
> The name of the musical "Oh Calcutta" is allgedly a Franco-English
> pun that cannot be discussed in polite company. Not sure if this is
> an urban myth or not - but the image used in many of the posters
> and advertising materials for the musical would lend credence to this
> idea. See for example:
>
> http://www.ohcalcutta.it/assets/images/immagine_donna.jpg
>
> Jitze
Hey! That's the original painting which gave its title to the show! It
was painted by Clovis Trouille, a French surrealist-anarchist painter.
The French pun in the title is in the purest surrealist tradition, and
I'm quite convinced that it was intentional on the part of its author!
A further taste of Clovis Trouille's paintings:
http://www.clovis-trouille.net/
--
Isabelle Cecchini
Paul D
> A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
> cross a condom with a Torah?
>
> Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah scroll.)
>
> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
Not quite bilingual, but maybe bi-dialectical.
There was a Geordie (Northumbrian) at the Battle of Little Big Horn.
When Custer heard the beating tom-toms, he informed his men, "the
Indians have war drums!"
"Thievin' bastards!" replied the Geordie.
Paul
Algernon Abercrombie
<isabelle...@wanadoo.fr.invalid> said:
> Jitze Couperus a écrit :
> >
> > The name of the musical "Oh Calcutta" is allgedly a Franco-English
> > pun that cannot be discussed in polite company. Not sure if this is
> > an urban myth or not - but the image used in many of the posters
> > and advertising materials for the musical would lend credence to this
> > idea. See for example:
> >
> > http://www.ohcalcutta.it/assets/images/immagine_donna.jpg
> >
> > Jitze
>
> Hey! That's the original painting which gave its title to the show! It
> was painted by Clovis Trouille, a French surrealist-anarchist painter.
> The French pun in the title is in the purest surrealist tradition, and
> I'm quite convinced that it was intentional on the part of its author!
In case anyone is wondering, as I did, what the pun is, you
can find an answer at http://preview.tinyurl.com/278dvj
where it says, in part
# Apparently, Oh! Calcutta! is a pun on the French
# phrase "Oh, quel cu t'as", which means: "Oh, what
# an ass you have".
The subject was discussed in alt.usage.english in 1996. See
http://preview.tinyurl.com/29jxhy . In that thread, one
posting that discusses the pun is the one written by
'Polar.'
A Google Groups search finds some difference in opinion as
to how the pun should be interpreted. Some say French 'cul'
should be translated 'ass'; others say 'cunt.' Similar
uncertainties exist in English, where 'fanny' means 'cunt'
in England (according to some sources), 'ass' in America.
Also, 'piece of ass' for sexual intercourse leaves doubt as
to just what 'ass' means.
Oleg Lego
>23 Jan 2007 12:08:27 -0800: "retrosorter" <hric...@sympatico.ca>: in
>sci.lang:
>
>>A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
>>cross a condom with a Torah?
>>
>>Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah scroll.)
>>
>>This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
>
>When looking for "yes, paarden" (Dutch-English pun) I found:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilingual_pun
Great Wikipedia entry! Thanks.
While reading the Hindi offerings there, I was reminded that I once
made up a pun that played on an Indian name. It isn't quite bilingual,
unless you consider names to have language, but here it is anyway.
A folk-singing group was touring in India, and could not figure out
the audience reaction at certain times.
Whenever they got to one of the refrains in a song, the vocalist would
shout out "Everybody sing!", but instead of singing, the audience
members just looked around at each other, saying "Well, we are not
*all* Singh!"
Roland Hutchinson
> Nobody likes the Spanglish jokes I've heard here in New Mexico:
>
> A pachuco is cruising in his lowrider and sees a pretty girl from
> behind. He opens the window and calls out, "Hop on, esa!"
>
> She says, "How did you know I'm Japanese?"
>
>
> How do you spell socks?
>
> S-o-c-k-s.
>
> ¡Eso sí que es!
[...]
> Are explanations in order?
> "Verge" is French for penis. "Esa",
> literally "that", is a friendly pachuco address to a girl or
> woman--feminine of "ese", from the greeting "¡Ese bato!", "that guy!"
> "Japonesa" is Spanish for a female Japanese.
More precisely "ese/esa" is "that (over there by you)" as distinguished from
"that (over there away from both of us)" or (in archaic English) "yon",
which is Spanish "aquello/aquella".
> The last punchline is Spanish that I can't parse for something like
> "That's just what it is!"
Closer, I think, to "That (thing over there by you, i.e. what you have just
said) indeed is the case!", or less literally and in more idiomatic
English, "Very true!". "Eso" is the neuter form of "ese". The neuter is
used (among other things) for references to things that haven't yet been
named and perhaps can't be (since anything that is named would have either
masculine or feminine gender; there are no neuter nouns in Spanish) -- or
something like that.
--
Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.
NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it.
John Dean
And while in Gallic realms, I recollect a novelty song from way back about
some little kittens who ventured too close to the water. The (punch)line
was:
"Un, deux, trois cats sank."
--
John Dean
Oxford
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> Rey wrote:
> >Robert Lieblich wrote:
>
> >[...]
>
> >> Another surname joke has a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe
> >> assigned the name, in the US, of Sean Ferguson. His original name
> >> was so hard to pronounce in English that on arrival at Ellis Island
> >> he picked out a substitute. But when he was asked for his name he
> >> couldn't remember the substitute, so he blurted out "Schoen
> >> Fergessen." ("I've forgotten.") Voila! Sean Ferguson.
> >The jump from Yiddish "shoyn fargésn" = [I have] 'already forgotten'
> >to "Sean/Shawn Férguson" is too big, improbable, and therefore unfunny
> >and *stupid*.
>
> >Punishment for anyone who's witless enough to retell that *stupid*
> >joke will be swift, cruel and severe: That perpetrator will be locked
> >up for 24 hours in a small, windowless room with "Rancid Dipshit" and
> >"Heidi Hasenhirn."
> Rey, you're absolutely right, maybe. The joke Bob told is old, but he made
> a _ayn bisle booboo_. The story is about Shayne Ferguson who blurts out to
> the immigration officer "Oy, Ich shayn fergesn."
>
> The joke does work. It works because of the accents, and the way
> immigrants hear foreign words.
...
I too learned this joke with "Shane Ferguson". I believe it's
Lithuanian Jews who pronounce YIVO "shoyn" as "shayn". At least my
maternal grandfather did. But Rey knows more about Yiddish than I do.
--
Jerry Friedman
Mike Lyle
[...]
> While reading the Hindi offerings there, I was reminded that I once
> made up a pun that played on an Indian name. It isn't quite bilingual,
> unless you consider names to have language, but here it is anyway.
>
> A folk-singing group was touring in India, and could not figure out
> the audience reaction at certain times.
>
> Whenever they got to one of the refrains in a song, the vocalist would
> shout out "Everybody sing!", but instead of singing, the audience
> members just looked around at each other, saying "Well, we are not
> *all* Singh!"
That's an eppalling punjabi joke. They make me sikh. You should be
kicked in the Hind quarters for anything simla.
Which reminds me of Napier's apocryphal report on capturing part of the
Indus Valley: "Peccavi".
--
Mike.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Gerry
"Frank ess" <fr...@fshe2fs.com> wrote
> Eether weigh, it's a monolingual pun in French...
I got one o' them!
A billboard advertising toothpaste depicted Louis Quatorze flashing a big
gleaming smile and saying
L'eclat? C'est moi!
Gerry
Gerry
One about three kittens named Un, Deux, Trois. Very curious and
mischievous. Tried to cross a stream in a paper boat, and
Un, Deux, Trois cats sank.
Gerry
Evan Kirshenbaum
> (The name of the musical "Oh Calcutta" is in what language?)
Nitpick: The name of the musical is "Oh! Calcutta!"
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |It's not coherent, it's merely
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |focused.
Palo Alto, CA 94304 | Keith Moore
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
/Pale Fire/, note to line 803. "Cow" is "korova" and "crow" is
"vorona". This was discussed recently at NABOKV-L (not a misprint); it
seems Nabokov didn't make it up.
--
Spearwielder Peaceman
LFS
Me too, when I was very young, from the Lithuanian branch of the family.
There weren't many Shanes on Rightpondia in those days - for a long time
I believed that it had something to do with Alan Ladd...
--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email)
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> jerry_fried...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > Nobody likes the Spanglish jokes I've heard here in New Mexico:
>
> > A pachuco is cruising in his lowrider and sees a pretty girl from
> > behind. He opens the window and calls out, "Hop on, esa!"
>
> > She says, "How did you know I'm Japanese?"
>
> > How do you spell socks?
>
> > S-o-c-k-s.
>
> > ¡Eso sí que es!
...
> > "Esa", literally "that", is a friendly pachuco address to a girl or
> > woman--feminine of "ese", from the greeting "¡Ese bato!", "that guy!"
...
> More precisely "ese/esa" is "that (over there by you)" as distinguished from
> "that (over there away from both of us)" or (in archaic English) "yon",
> which is Spanish "aquello/aquella".
At least in Mexico, this distinction seems to be as obsolete as
"yonder" is in the U. S. I've only noticed "aquello" (etc.) in
specifying something otherwise unknown. For instance, "El término
metrosexual, al igual que el de tecnosexual (aquel hombre amante de la
tecnología y del prestigio social que esto representa) o el de
retrosexual (aquel que regresa al estereotipo de masculinidad
tradicional donde la fuerza y no la belleza es el referente esencial)
es..." <http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/399628.html>.
For those following this, "The term 'metrosexual', just like
'technosexual' (THAT man who loves technology and the social prestige
that this represents) or 'retrosexual' (THAT [man] who returns to the
stereotype of traditional masculinity where strength and not good looks
is the essential referent) is..."
However, my search found lots of literary examples with the meaning you
gave. I'm not sure how modern they are. Archie or someone may be able
to help out here.
Obaue: I didn't know "technosexual" or "retrosexual", which Mr. Google
says exist in English.
> > The last punchline is Spanish that I can't parse for something like
> > "That's just what it is!"
> Closer, I think, to "That (thing over there by you, i.e. what you have just
> said) indeed is the case!", or less literally and in more idiomatic
> English, "Very true!". "Eso" is the neuter form of "ese". The neuter is
> used (among other things) for references to things that haven't yet been
> named and perhaps can't be (since anything that is named would have either
> masculine or feminine gender; there are no neuter nouns in Spanish) -- or
> something like that.
Thanks, but you haven't told me what the "que" is doing in there. (I
know, "Idiom.")
--
Jerry Friedman
Roland Hutchinson
> On Jan 24, 8:31 am, Roland Hutchinson <my.spamt...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> jerry_fried...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> > Nobody likes the Spanglish jokes I've heard here in New Mexico:
>>
>> > A pachuco is cruising in his lowrider and sees a pretty girl from
>> > behind. He opens the window and calls out, "Hop on, esa!"
>>
>> > She says, "How did you know I'm Japanese?"
>>
>> > How do you spell socks?
>>
>> > S-o-c-k-s.
>>
>> > ¡Eso sí que es!
> ...
>
>> > "Esa", literally "that", is a friendly pachuco address to a girl or
>> > woman--feminine of "ese", from the greeting "¡Ese bato!", "that guy!"
> ...
>
>> More precisely "ese/esa" is "that (over there by you)" as distinguished
>> from "that (over there away from both of us)" or (in archaic English)
>> "yon", which is Spanish "aquello/aquella".
>
> At least in Mexico, this distinction seems to be as obsolete as
> "yonder" is in the U. S.
Interesting. I hadn't realized that.
[...]
>> > The last punchline is Spanish that I can't parse for something like
>> > "That's just what it is!"
>
>> Closer, I think, to "That (thing over there by you, i.e. what you have
>> just said) indeed is the case!", or less literally and in more idiomatic
>> English, "Very true!". "Eso" is the neuter form of "ese". The neuter is
>> used (among other things) for references to things that haven't yet been
>> named and perhaps can't be (since anything that is named would have
>> either masculine or feminine gender; there are no neuter nouns in
>> Spanish) -- or something like that.
>
> Thanks, but you haven't told me what the "que" is doing in there. (I
> know, "Idiom.")
I suspect it's the same "que" as, or at least a close cousin of, the one in:
¡Que es verdad! ([It is the case] that it is true! -- Idiomatically,
perhaps, "Is that ever the truth!", or "Boy oh boy, that's the truth!").
The meaning isn't much different from a simple ¡Es verdad!, it's just a bit
more emphatic.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a native Spanish speaker; my examples and translations
may be total crocks. Well, probably not _total_.)
Prai Jei
<1169582907....@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>:
> A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
> cross a condom with a Torah?
>
> Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah scroll.)
>
> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
The motto on the arms of the Prince of Wales is given in German, "Ich
dien" ("I serve"). It was intended to sound similar to Welsh "Eich
dyn" ("Your man").
--
Terms and conditions apply. Batteries not included. Subject to status.
Contains moderate language. Always read the label. Keep out of children.
Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply
Skitt
There's this from Fawlty Towers:
Basil: It's been there since Monday, Sybil... Tuesday...
Wednesday... Friday... Sat -
[realizes Sybil is no longer there; goes across to Manuel who has
come in carrying three breakfast trays]
Manuel! There - is - too - much - butter - on - those - trays.
Manuel: Que?
Basil: There is too much butter on those trays.
[he points to each tray in turn]
Manuel: No, no, no, Senor!
Basil: What?
Manuel: Not 'on- those- trays'. No sir - 'uno dos tres.' Uno...
dos... tres...
Basil: No, no. Hay mucho burro alli!
Manuel: Que?
Basil: Hay... mucho... burro... alli!
Manuel: Ah, mantequilla!
Basil: What? Que?
Manuel: Mantequilla. Burro is... is... [brays like a donkey]
Basil: What?
Manuel: Burro... [does more donkey imitations]
Basil: Manuel, por favor...
Manuel: Si, si...
Sybil: [coming back in] What's the matter, Basil?
Basil: Nothing, dear, I'm just dealing with it.
Manuel: [to Sybil] He speak good... how do you say...?
Sybil: English!
Basil: Mantequilla... solamente... dos...
Manuel: Dos?
Sybil: [to Basil] Don't look at me. You're the one who's
supposed to be able to speak it.
[Basil angrily grabs the excess butter from the trays.]
Basil: Two pieces! Two each! Arriba, arriba!
[He waves his hand towards the bedrooms and Manuel runs off.]
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
http://www.geocities.com/opus731/
Trond Engen
> Dezelfde Engelsman rijdt een tiental kippen dood op het Groninger
> platteland. De boer komt kwaad aanstormen (met waarschijnlijk een
> hooivork in zijn hand). Engelsman: keep quiet!
> Boer: wat kiep kwait? Wel 10 kiepen kwait!:’-D
This reminds me of one I heard in an English lesson when I was around
12. I hope I can reconstruct it.
A tourist came to a small hotel in the Norwegian backland. The host
spoke barely enough English to close the initial negotiations. Judging
mainly by the surprised look on his face, he finally seemed to have
understood that the tourist wanted clean sheets, and he called for the
maid. She shook her head and went upstairs to prepare the room. After a
few minutes the guest came down, boiling, and dragged the host to his
room. He pointed at the bed.
- What is this?
- Diss iss jår sjit, sør.
- Is it clean?
- Jess, sør, vi hæv klint sjit hir diss morning!
- Well, this smells like cow dung.
- Jess, sør, fain sjit from aver kav.
Dictionary:
<klina> [kli:na] v. "smear", actually a cognate of English 'clean'.
<skit> [Si:t] n. "dirt, shit", obvious cognate of english 'shit'.
--
Trond Engen
- sleeping anywhere
izzy
Rock of Ages (better if told during Chanuka)
Old Moze, an Israeli tour guide, was well-past retirement age but he
continued to take older tourists to locations that were not too hard to
get to. His customers always enjoyed these tours. You could ask any of
them and they would literally sing his praises:
"Moze's tour ya sure oughtta see."
G \ D / G / C \ B \ A \ G
(where \ means the next note is lower and / means it is higher)
ciao,
Israel "izzy" Cohen (author of this pun)
Body Part Maps moderator
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/BPMaps/
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
> Jerry Friedman wrote:
> > Murray Arnow wrote:
> >> Rey wrote:
[...]
> >> The joke does work. It works because of the accents, and
> >> the way immigrants hear foreign words.
Oy, Murray! And you are calling *me* a _goyishe kop_?
First, this joke has nothing to do with *accents* but with
non-matching *syllable stress*.
Second, it's not about how the Jewish *immigrant* (mis)heard foreign
words but how the *American* immigration official misunderstood the
Yiddish verb "fargésn" (forget) and supposedly took it to be the
surname "Ferguson."
Third, if you just READ this stupid joke (i.e., look at the printed
words), _Ferguson_ and the variously misspelled Yiddish verb (e.g. as
_Fergessen_) LOOK close enough to be near-homophones, but if you
PRONOUNCE the two words and know how to pronounce that Yiddish verb,
these two words sound almost as different as "vertíginous"
(ver-TI-ginous) and "vértigo" (VER-tigo), stress-wise.
> > ...
Murray, here you snipped what my objection to this *stupid* joke is
all about and thus perhaps misled Jerry and Laura to miss my point.
I'll restate the snipped part:
This idiotic "joke" doesn't work because the stressed
syllables don't match, and therefore you can't get from
Yiddish "fargésn" to English "Férguson" (é = stressed,
as are the syllables in caps below):
Yiddish: "far-GES-n"
English: "FER-gu-son"
You see, it's *not* about the various Yiddish dialect pronunciations
(your "accents") of "shoyn" and "sheyn" and "shon" and "shayn" and
whatever, which lead to "Sean" and "Shawn" and "Shane" as the
immigrant's new first name, to which I don't object, but it's about
the stupid and impossible syllable-stress change from "fargésn"
(far-GES-n) -- stressed on the SECOND syllable -- to "Férguson"
(FER-gu-son) -- stressed on the FIRST syllable. If the English
surname "Ferguson" were stressed on the second syllable (*Fer-GU-son),
that joke would work, but because it's not stressed on the second
syllable like the Yiddish verb but on the first syllable, that joke is
*stupid* and sucks.
> > I too learned this joke with "Shane Ferguson". I believe it's
> > Lithuanian Jews who pronounce YIVO "shoyn" as "shayn". At least my
> > maternal grandfather did. But Rey knows more about Yiddish than I do.
Jerry, perhaps you meant "sheyn" (rhyming with "Shane"), not "shayn"
(rhyming with "shine"). This "ey" and "ay" confusion is common in
romanized Yiddish of most lay writers of Yiddish; just look at the
trash by Leo Rosten and at Web sites with Yiddish glossaries. Not to
mention the inconsistent additional variants "ei," "ai," "ej" and
"aj." Oy!
As indicated above, the change from "shayn" [correct: "sheyn"] to
"Shane" is okay, because these two words are homophones; it's that
stupid "Férguson" I object to, because it's sound-wise very different
from "fargésn."
> Me too, when I was very young, from the Lithuanian branch of the
> family. There weren't many Shanes on Rightpondia in those days - for
> a long time I believed that it had something to do with Alan Ladd...
>
> --
> Laura
See my comments to Jerry, above. Murray, Jerry and Laura are very
smart folks with a good ear for language; thus I'm puzzled why they
did not notice what I'm objecting to, namely that stupid "Férguson"
from "fargésn."
~~~ Rey ~~~
Perhaps a goy, but no
goyishe kop, Yiddish-wise
izzy
Hebrew puns translated into English idioms
These Hebrew expressions appear in other languages as idioms or
nonsense. Special characters: @ = aleph, X = het, and 3 = aiyin.
Type 1: The translation of a Hebrew pun on a Hebrew phrase
Ex. 1:
Clear text: B'QoSHi = barely, hardly, scarcely
Heb. pun: B'3oR SHiNai (Job 19:20)
English: (escape by the) skin of my teeth
Ex. 2:
Clear text: YaRa:aX GaVNooNi = gibbous moon
Heb. pun: YaRoK G'ViNaH = green cheese
English: The moon is made of "green cheese".
Ex. 3:
Clear text: PeLeTZ + K'Foo = shiver, tremble (compare English palsy) +
frozen
Heb. pun: P'LiZ + KoF
English: brass monkey (weather)
(Treating P as B in Arabic, P'LiZ KoF => balls (k)off ..., hence
"cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey")
Ex. 4:
Clear text: YeReKH yod-resh-khaf = buttock, haunch, thigh
Heb. pun: YaRa:aX yod-resh-het = moon
English: to moon = to expose one's buttocks as a prank or gesture of
disrespect.
Type 2: The translation of a Hebrew pun on a phrase in another language
Ex. 5
Latin: sopor sond = sleep soundly/deeply
Heb. pun: S'PoR TZo@N = count sheep (imperative)
English: Count sheep (to go to sleep)
Ex. 6
Latin: Saccharomyces cervisae = Brewer's yeast (an ancient hangover
remedy)
Heb. pun: Sa3aR MiNSHaKH KeLeV = hair bite dog (compare Gk Cerberus,
the 3-headed dog guarding the entrance to Hades)
English: Take "hair of the dog that bit you" (as a hangover remedy)
Best regards,
Israel "izzy" Cohen
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BPMaps
LFS
>
>
> See my comments to Jerry, above. Murray, Jerry and Laura are very
> smart folks with a good ear for language; thus I'm puzzled why they
> did not notice what I'm objecting to, namely that stupid "Férguson"
> from "fargésn."
>
> ~~~ Rey ~~~
> Perhaps a goy, but no
> goyishe kop, Yiddish-wise
[aue only]
Oh, I understand your objection perfectly. But applying rational
analysis to a joke like that just doesn't work because there is more to
the joke than the joke itself.
When the joke is told by people who have their own stories of mishearing
and misunderstanding not just the language but also the ways of doing
things in the country they have arrived in, it takes on a different
significance.
When it was told by my aunts, uncles and grandparents, it was normally
part of a conversation recounting similar incidents of their own
experience, many of which were a good deal funnier in the telling than
the joke, but which also carried a certain poignancy which I only
recognise now, looking back.
That's my take on it, anyway.
Roland Hutchinson
To my way of thinking, it is the very implausibility of it (even after the
explanation), stress shift and all, that makes it a joke rather than, say,
an urban legend.
Peter T. Daniels
On Jan 24, 4:58 pm, a...@iname.com (Murray Arnow) wrote:
> Rey wrote:
> >L[aura]FS wrote (in AUE only):
>
> >> Jerry Friedman wrote:
> >> > Murray Arnow wrote:
> >> >> Rey wrote:
>
> >[...]
>
> >> >> The joke does work. It works because of the accents, and
> >> >> the way immigrants hear foreign words.
>
> >Oy, Murray! And you are calling *me* a _goyishe kop_?I guess the double entendre didn't work.
>
> >First, this joke has nothing to do with *accents* but with
> >non-matching *syllable stress*.Rey,
Don't bother responding to Rindhole. He knows everything and is not
interested in instructing, only in insulting. He thinks he's _very_
clever.
HVS
> Don't bother responding to Rindhole. He knows everything and is
> not interested in instructing, only in insulting.
At which he's rather embarrassingly poor.
> He thinks he's _very_ clever.
Amazingly, there are other posters who appear to share that view;
it's a fairly reliable guide to perspicuity and/or the lack thereof.
--
Cheers, Harvey
Canadian and British English, indiscriminately mixed
For e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van
Carsten Schultz
> "retrosorter" <hric...@sympatico.ca> writes:
>
>> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
>
> I once had a dream in which Hirzebruch was giving a talk about
> fibre bundles (Faeserbundel).
Faserbündel. (Or Faserbuendel, if your font lacks the `ü'.)
> At one point, he considered a particular
> example in which he started with a vector bundle with metric and removed
> its unit ball bundle (a standard construction) and described this operation
> as a Faesectomy.
>
> Sorry it isn't more polished. It was a dream, after all.
You have strange dreams indeed.
Best,
Carsten
--
Carsten Schultz (2:38, 33:47)
http://carsten.codimi.de/
PGP/GPG key on the pgp.net key servers,
fingerprint on my home page.
Peter Moylan
> Oleg Lego wrote:
>> Whenever they got to one of the refrains in a song, the vocalist
>> would shout out "Everybody sing!", but instead of singing, the
>> audience members just looked around at each other, saying "Well, we
>> are not *all* Singh!"
>
> That's an eppalling punjabi joke. They make me sikh. You should be
> kicked in the Hind quarters for anything simla.
>
> Which reminds me of Napier's apocryphal report on capturing part of
> the Indus Valley: "Peccavi".
Once, when asked about the state of the weather, and being unable to
remember the plu- word, I replied "regnat". You may now groan.
I won't even attempt to recount what I said when offered a glass of port
in bad weather.
--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain
eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer
receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses. The optusnet
address could disappear at any time.
Peter Moylan
> A tourist came to a small hotel in the Norwegian backland. The host
> spoke barely enough English to close the initial negotiations.
> Judging mainly by the surprised look on his face, he finally seemed
> to have understood that the tourist wanted clean sheets, and he
> called for the maid. She shook her head and went upstairs to prepare
> the room. After a few minutes the guest came down, boiling, and
> dragged the host to his room. He pointed at the bed.
>
> - What is this? - Diss iss jår sjit, sør. - Is it clean? - Jess, sør,
> vi hæv klint sjit hir diss morning! - Well, this smells like cow
> dung. - Jess, sør, fain sjit from aver kav.
Once, when staying in a hotel in Italy, and after searching for words in
my tiny copy of "Teach Yourself Italian" - which I had never read until
my arrival at the hotel - I went down to the lobby and asked "Posso
avere del aqua nella mia camera?" (May I have some water in my room? I
will not vouch for correct spelling or grammar.) The result was a long
bilingual discussion, of which neither side understood very much, which
was apparently about calling the plumber. Finally one of us hit on the
word "botteglia" (bottle), and the problem was resolved.
I hadn't expected language problems in this hotel. When I was checking
in, the man in front of me asked the owner, in German, whether he
understood German. The hotelier threw his arms wide and said "Parlo
tutti!", which left me much relieved. The relief lasted only until my
own check-in, when I struggled to understand why I was being asked to
sleep on the piano.
R H Draney
>
>Once, when asked about the state of the weather, and being unable to
>remember the plu- word, I replied "regnat". You may now groan.
>
>I won't even attempt to recount what I said when offered a glass of port
>in bad weather.
I can't decide whether that one was better or worse for having to figure it out
myself....t
--
"You got Schadenfreude on my Weltanschauung!"
"You got Weltanschauung in my Schadenfreude!"
Arcadian Rises
On Jan 23, 4:19 pm, "jerry_fried...@yahoo.com"
<jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> retrosorter wrote:
> > A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
> > cross a condom with a Torah?
>
> > Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah scroll.)
>
> > This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.J. Joyce, /Finnegans Wake/, or so I'm told.
>
> V. Nabokov, passim. "Van, /je suis sur la verge/ (Blanche again) of a
> revolting amorous adventure." (/Ada/, Part Two, Chapter 1, p. 334. A
> character named Blanche had given a memorable speech in Franglais.)
Speaking of Nabokov, from "Pale fire" a mistranlation of a verse from
"L'Albatross" IIRC "a peine" is translated "painfully".
Arcadian Rises
On Jan 23, 3:08 pm, "retrosorter" <hrich...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
I don't believe this amounts to a pun, but "RIP" means the same in
Latin and English.
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
[Properly snipped and cleaned up]
> Rey wrote:
>> Murray Arnow wrote:
>
>>> The joke does work. It works because of the accents,
>>> and the way immigrants hear foreign words.
>
>> Oy, Murray! And you are calling *me* a _goyishe kop_?
>
>[...]
>
> Don't bother responding to Rindhole. He knows everything and is not
> interested in instructing, only in insulting.
Kind of like you, Petey, eh? Except that *I* insult with a dash of
wit & humor, whereas *your* lack of wit & humor is notorious. You're
as funny as a decomposing wombat, Petey. If you should ever post
anything even slightly witty or good-humored, do send me a copy by e-mail.
And furthermore, since 1997 I've done plenty of instructing in AUE,
other newsgroups, and occasionally in <sci.lang>, but after having
cast bushels of instructive pearls before mostly you-know-whats, I've
decided two years ago to escape from these newsgroup asylums and only
occasionally peep into their barred windows and chuckle about such
inmates as Freifrau Heidi von Hasenhirn.
> He thinks he's _very_ clever.
Ah sho' is clever (and yet do very stupid things), because I've had 70
years of accumulating knowledge; however, I'm certainly not as clever
as some of the top brains in <sci.lang>, AUE and some German-language
groups, and I marvel at their knowledge and clevericity. The
difference between you and me is that I *admire* such clever and
learnèd folks, whereas you're an *envious* Snippy Little Bitch (TM).
~~~ Rey ("Rindhole") Aman ~~~
Oh, wait, Petey -- here's even *more* for you to be envious about:
I'm a real film star now! Check IMDb. I'm in this 2005 documentary/film:
http://www.sonic.net/maledicta/Fuck-film.html
Eat your envious little heart out, Petey!
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > Don't bother responding to Rindhole. He knows everything
> > and is not interested in instructing, only in insulting.
> At which he's rather embarrassingly poor.
Ooooo! Envious little sniper Harvey, one of the most insignificant
cunts on Earth, just flung more dung! Harvey, you silly old twit,
haven't I just shredded your dumb ass in <alt.english.usage> (Subject:
Banal)? You're itching for *more* punishment? If you were worth it,
I would again kick your gross glutei, but I can't waste more time on
nonentities like you.
Since <sci.lang>ers are unfamiliar with the quality of Harvey's
soul-shriveling zingers, here's his best attack on me so far:
"...but he's really quite a sad case -- an ex-con with a
cloth ear when it comes to insults with any real impact."
Devastating, huh? And that pathetic little nobody Harvey -- a
Canadian-British Arschitect -- calls *my* insulting skills "rather
embarrassingly poor."
Heh-heh. Poor Harvey is a crappy toad sitting in his mud hole and
enviously shaking his little fist at that graceful eagle Aman swooping
down on him and emptying his cloaca on that assholey amphibian.
> > He thinks he's _very_ clever.
> Amazingly, there are other posters who appear to share that view;
Yup, that's the rare ones with wit & brains and sans envy.
> it's a fairly reliable guide to perspicuity and/or the lack thereof.
Lacking perspicuity is one of Harvey's most serious shortcomings, but
it isn't nice to publicly point out such intellectual flaws of quasi-retards.
> --
> Cheers, Harvey
Cheer *this*, toad!
~~~ Ex-convict Rey ~~~
Just call me "Adler"
http://www.sonic.net/maledicta/penpal_pr.html
Roland Hutchinson
> Mike Lyle wrote:
> I won't even attempt to recount what I said when offered a glass of port
> in bad weather.
"An ill wine -- no body; it's blowing good"?
Peter Moylan
> Peter Moylan wrote:
>
>> Mike Lyle wrote:
>
>> I won't even attempt to recount what I said when offered a glass of port
>> in bad weather.
>
> "An ill wine -- no body; it's blowing good"?
I've lost track. Are we back in the tuba thread?
Roland Hutchinson
> Roland Hutchinson wrote:
>> Peter Moylan wrote:
>>
>>> Mike Lyle wrote:
>>
>>> I won't even attempt to recount what I said when offered a glass of port
>>> in bad weather.
>>
>> "An ill wine -- no body; it's blowing good"?
>
> I've lost track. Are we back in the tuba thread?
That would be a bassless assumption.
Arcadian Rises
On Jan 24, 4:07 pm, "Reinhold (Rey) Aman" <a...@sonic.net> wrote:
[...]
> First, this joke has nothing to do with *accents* but with
> non-matching *syllable stress*.
...which in the given context means almost the same thing.
An important part of the thick, foreign accent is also the wrong
stressing of the syllables. (perhaps that's why foreign pronounciation
is called "accent" and not "vowel" or "rhythm")
I know that because I'm an expert practitioner of a foreign accent and
not too long ago, when I asked directions on the highway for a wrongly
stressed locality I got nowhere.
So your complaint about the joke is that the name is wrongly stressed,
that's a joke by itself.
athel...@yahoo
On Jan 25, 5:54 pm, "Arcadian Rises" <Arcadianri...@aol.com> wrote:
[ ... ]
>
> I know that because I'm an expert practitioner of a foreign accent and
> not too long ago, when I asked directions on the highway for a wrongly
> stressed locality I got nowhere.
That brings back memories. Many years ago I was with a group of people
in a hired car in Crete, and we wanted directions to a place called
Matala. Not a difficult name to pronounce, you'd think. But all efforts
to get a local person to understand where we wanted to go were greeted
with totally blank looks, until it occurred to one of us to try
stressing it on the first syllable instead of the second, and that
immediately brought smiles and and the Greek equivalent of "Ah, Matala,
why didn't you say so?".
athel
Sara Lorimer
> A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
> cross a condom with a Torah?
>
> Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah scroll.)
>
> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
Because I'm too lazy to type it out, I'll just cut and paste from
<http://www.fi.muni.cz/usr/jkucera/humor4.htm>:
> A man who speaks only Spanish goes into a small clothing store, with the
> intention of purchasing a pair of socks. He does not know where the socks
> are located, however, and walks over to a sales clerk to ask for them.
> Unfortunately, the clerk knows only English, so the conversation
> progresses rather slowly.
>
> Clerk: May I help you, sir?
>
> Customer: Quiero comprar medias (I want to buy socks)
>
> Clerk: I'm sorry...I don't understand Spanish. Do you want pants? [points
> to pants racks]
>
> Customer: No, no. Quiero medias.
>
> Clerk: Do you want shirts? [Points at shirts.]
>
> Customer: No, no. Quiero medias. (No, no. I want socks.) [Points at feet.]
> Clerk: Ahh...you want socks, right? [Points at socks.]
>
> Customer: Medias, si! Eso, si, que es! (Socks, yes! That's exactly it!)
> [Pronounced S-O-C-K-S]
>
> Clerk: Well if you knew how to spell it, why didn't you say so, in the
> first place?
--
SML
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> L[aura]FS wrote (in AUE only):
As I'm writing.
> >JerryFriedmanwrote:
> > > Murray Arnow wrote:
> > >> Rey wrote:[...]
>
> > >> The joke does work. It works because of the accents, and
> > >> the way immigrants hear foreign words.Oy, Murray! And you are calling *me* a _goyishe kop_?
...
> > > ...Murray, here you snipped what my objection to this *stupid* joke is
> all about and thus perhaps misledJerryand Laura to miss my point.
Not misled. I just commented on the part I had a comment about.
> I'll restate the snipped part:
>
> This idiotic "joke" doesn't work because the stressed
> syllables don't match, and therefore you can't get from
> Yiddish "fargésn" to English "Férguson" (é = stressed,
> as are the syllables in caps below):
>
> Yiddish: "far-GES-n"
> English: "FER-gu-son"
...
I'm not arguing, except that I think it's a matter of taste whether
this discrepancy throws the pun too far off.
> > > I too learned this joke with "Shane Ferguson". I believe it's
> > > Lithuanian Jews who pronounce YIVO "shoyn" as "shayn". At least my
> > > maternal grandfather did. But Rey knows more about Yiddish than I do.
> Jerry, perhaps you meant "sheyn" (rhyming with "Shane"), not "shayn"
> (rhyming with "shine"). This "ey" and "ay" confusion is common in
> romanized Yiddish of most lay writers of Yiddish; just look at the
> trash by Leo Rosten and at Web sites with Yiddish glossaries. Not to
> mention the inconsistent additional variants "ei," "ai," "ej" and
> "aj." Oy!
...
I had the feeling the YIVO transliteration was "ey", but I was trying
to represent the sound in a way that would make sense to English
speakers. What I should have written was [SeIn], I guess. Apologies
to anyone I misled.
--
Jerry Friedman
Mike Lyle
> Peter Moylan wrote:
>
>> Roland Hutchinson wrote:
>>> Peter Moylan wrote:
>>>
>>>> Mike Lyle wrote:
>>>
>>>> I won't even attempt to recount what I said when offered a glass
>>>> of port in bad weather.
>>>
>>> "An ill wine -- no body; it's blowing good"?
>>
>> I've lost track. Are we back in the tuba thread?
>
> That would be a bassless assumption.
Oh, no! Not that damned euphonious singing fish again! (BTW, was it
mentioned earlier that the Queen had one of them, and, according to one
account, found it unfailingly diverting?)
--
Mike.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> On Jan 23, 4:19?pm, "jerry_fried...@yahoo.com"
>
> <jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > retrosorter wrote:
> > > A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
> > > cross a condom with a Torah?
>
> > > Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah scroll.)
>
> > > This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.J. Joyce, /Finnegans Wake/, or so I'm told.
>
> > revolting amorous adventure." ?(/Ada/, Part Two, Chapter 1, p. 334. ?A
> > character named Blanche had given a memorable speech in Franglais.)Speaking of Nabokov, from "Pale fire" a mistranlation of a verse from
> "L'Albatross" IIRC "a peine" is translated "painfully".
Can't quite be that--the only hit on "painful" and the only one on
"painfully" in the searchable /Pale Fire/ at Amazon have nothing to do
with "L'Albatros" (which seems to be a poem by Baudelaire that I read
in college). Maybe one of Nabokov's other books? Or a different line?
There definitely seem to be some thematic resemblances.
--
Jerry Friedman
Roland Hutchinson
> Roland Hutchinson wrote:
>> Peter Moylan wrote:
>>
>>> Roland Hutchinson wrote:
>>>> Peter Moylan wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Mike Lyle wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I won't even attempt to recount what I said when offered a glass
>>>>> of port in bad weather.
>>>>
>>>> "An ill wine -- no body; it's blowing good"?
>>>
>>> I've lost track. Are we back in the tuba thread?
>>
>> That would be a bassless assumption.
>
> Oh, no! Not that damned euphonious singing fish again! (BTW, was it
> mentioned earlier that the Queen had one of them, and, according to one
> account, found it unfailingly diverting?)
Well, there are euphonia and then there are euphonia. I was asked to do
some coaching of a euph orchestra earlier this week here in New Jersey, but
when I got there, I found to my confusion that they were all
middle-schoolers playing stringed instruments.
Herman Rubin
Reinhold (Rey) Aman <am...@sonic.net> wrote:
>Robert Lieblich wrote:
>[...]
>> Another surname joke has a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe
>> assigned the name, in the US, of Sean Ferguson. His original name
>> was so hard to pronounce in English that on arrival at Ellis Island
>> he picked out a substitute. But when he was asked for his name he
>> couldn't remember the substitute, so he blurted out "Schoen
>> Fergessen." ("I've forgotten.") Voila! Sean Ferguson.
>Bob, I'm disappointed in you -- one of the wittiest posters in AUE --
>because you told this *stupid* "joke" only schmucks consider funny.
>And as a speaker of _a bisl yidish_ you should know how *stupid* this
>non-joke is.
>I've seen this *stupid* "joke" several times in various language
>newsgroups and elsewhere and hate it with a passion -- because it's so
>STUPID. Thus I'm going to kill it once and for all.
>This idiotic "joke" doesn't work because the stressed syllables don't
>match, and therefore you can't get from Yiddish "fargsn" to English
>"Frguson" ( = stressed, as are the syllables in caps below):
This joke has been going around for ages. An ingredient
to the story is that the immigration officers were not
the greatest linguists, and errors like this and more
were quite common. That part is correct.
>Yiddish: "far-GES-n"
>English: "FER-gu-son"
>The jump from Yiddish "shoyn fargsn" = [I have] 'already forgotten'
>to "Sean/Shawn Frguson" is too big, improbable, and therefore unfunny
>and *stupid*.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
Herman Rubin
Peter Moylan <pe...@ozebelgDieSpammers.org> wrote:
>retrosorter wrote:
>> A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
>> cross a condom with a Torah?
>> Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah
>> scroll.)
>> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
>When we were first married my wife would open the window in the morning
>and say "Lo, the morn!" Now she just says "Coup de grace."
There is a book, _Fractured French_, which has French phrases
which have totally different meanings if read by an English
speaker who knows no French.
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
On Jan 24, 1:30 am, Peter Moylan <p...@ozebelgDieSpammers.org> wrote:
> retrosorter wrote:
> > A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
> > cross a condom with a Torah?
>
> > Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah
> > scroll.)
>
> > This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.When we were first married my wife would open the window in the morning
> and say "Lo, the morn!" Now she just says "Coup de grace."
Not an easy one for the rhotic.
--
Jerry Friedman
Peter Moylan
> In article <45b70b27$0$5743$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au>, Peter
> Moylan <pe...@ozebelgDieSpammers.org> wrote:
>> When we were first married my wife would open the window in the
>> morning and say "Lo, the morn!" Now she just says "Coup de grace."
>
> There is a book, _Fractured French_, which has French phrases which
> have totally different meanings if read by an English speaker who
> knows no French.
One of my favourites is the sign "Suivre la piste" which can be found in
some French parks. This obviously means "Follow the intoxicated woman".
I've mentioned this one before, but ... when my French-speaking wife and
an equally French-speaking friend first visited Australia, they were
initially puzzled by the sign "No pets" that is found in many camping
grounds. The French word "pet" means "fart".
One of the most central stations in the Brussels metro system is located
at the intersection of Wetstraat and Kunstlaan. Not surprisingly, the
name of the station in Dutch is "Kunst-Wet". Since my knowledge of Dutch
is poor, I automatically read the sign as "Wet-kunts".
--
John Holmes
"Peter Moylan" <pe...@ozebelgDieSpammers.org> wrote in message
news:45b7f9a3$0$8001$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
>
> Once, when staying in a hotel in Italy, and after searching for words in
> my tiny copy of "Teach Yourself Italian" - which I had never read until
> my arrival at the hotel - I went down to the lobby and asked "Posso
> avere del aqua nella mia camera?" (May I have some water in my room? I
> will not vouch for correct spelling or grammar.) The result was a long
> bilingual discussion, of which neither side understood very much, which
> was apparently about calling the plumber. Finally one of us hit on the
> word "botteglia" (bottle), and the problem was resolved.
Trying to make bookings there by email has its hazards, too. I kept
wondering why there were no replies until I found that a subject line of
'prenotazione camera' isn't a sure-fire indicator of one of those
pharmaceutical spam emails.
--
Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus a u e
at tpg dot com dot au
Peter T. Daniels
On Jan 25, 9:05 pm, hru...@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) wrote:
> In article <45b70b27$0$5743$afc38...@news.optusnet.com.au>,
> Peter Moylan <p...@ozebelgDieSpammers.org> wrote:
>
> >retrosorter wrote:
> >> A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
> >> cross a condom with a Torah?
> >> Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah
> >> scroll.)
> >> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
> >When we were first married my wife would open the window in the morning
> >and say "Lo, the morn!" Now she just says "Coup de grace."There is a book, _Fractured French_, which has French phrases
> which have totally different meanings if read by an English
> speaker who knows no French.
Not to mention, of course, *Mots d'heures, gousses, ra^mes*.
Oleg Lego
Oleg Lego
>In article <45b70b27$0$5743$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au>,
>Peter Moylan <pe...@ozebelgDieSpammers.org> wrote:
>>retrosorter wrote:
>>> A friend recently told me this one-liner: "What do you get when you
>>> cross a condom with a Torah?
>
>>> Answer- A safer Torah. (in Hebrew, sefer torah refers to Torah
>>> scroll.)
>
>>> This got me wondering if anyone knows any other bilingual puns.
>
>>When we were first married my wife would open the window in the morning
>>and say "Lo, the morn!" Now she just says "Coup de grace."
>
>There is a book, _Fractured French_, which has French phrases
>which have totally different meanings if read by an English
>speaker who knows no French.
I wish I had that one! My father had a copy, and I used to read it at
least once per year. Some I remember...
Sil vous plait - Not sterling.
Carte Blanche - Blanche is too drunk to walk.
A la carte - On the wagon.
Hors de Combat - The women are fighting again.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Herman Rubin wrote:
>> In article <45b70b27$0$5743$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au>, Peter
>> Moylan <pe...@ozebelgDieSpammers.org> wrote:
>
>>> When we were first married my wife would open the window in the
>>> morning and say "Lo, the morn!" Now she just says "Coup de grace."
>> There is a book, _Fractured French_, which has French phrases which
>> have totally different meanings if read by an English speaker who
>> knows no French.
>
> One of my favourites is the sign "Suivre la piste" which can be
> found in some French parks. This obviously means "Follow the
> intoxicated woman".
Unfortunately, I don't have the albums handy,[1] so I'll have to do
this from memory, but Woody Woodbury had a routine that included
several of these. The ones I remember are "Jean d'Arc" (the bulb's
burned out), "hors de combat" (the girls are fighting again) and
"carte blanche" (they're bringing Blanche home in a wagon).
[1] I was going to rip my parents' LPs the last time I was in Chicago,
but I managed not to bring the connector I needed, and I didn't
get a chance to go out and buy one.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If I am ever forced to make a
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |choice between learning and using
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |win32, or leaving the computer
|industry, let me just say it was
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |nice knowing all of you. :-)
(650)857-7572 | Randal Schwartz
Peter Moylan
> The Herman Rubin entity posted thusly:
>
>> which have totally different meanings if read by an English
>> speaker who knows no French.
>
> I wish I had that one! My father had a copy, and I used to read it at
> least once per year. Some I remember...
>
> Sil vous plait - Not sterling.
> Carte Blanche - Blanche is too drunk to walk.
> A la carte - On the wagon.
> Hors de Combat - The women are fighting again.
>
Then there's
Pas de deux -- Singles only.
Je t'adore -- Shut the door.
Défence de cracher -- We're out of bullets, use fireworks.
Auspices -- Horse urine
and a few hundred more that I've gone and forgotten. _Punch_ magazine
had a regular column called "Let's parler franglais" at one time.
Jitze Couperus
<gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
Oooh yes - I'd forgotten those
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 mčne
Qu'importe un petit d'un petit
Tout Gai de Regennes
Caused no end of consternation when the Memsahib caught
me mumbling aloud, sounding like Inspector Clouseau trying
to recite English nursery rhymes.
Jitze
Oleg Lego
Now _that_ one I have! The last time I saw it in a bookstore, I bought
two or three copies. I kept losing the previous ones I owned to folks
who forgot to return them.
Et Curie de Curie D'oc.
retrosorter
Some other French signs likely to be miscionstrued by unilingual
anglophones are:
maison de cuir and mets chinois
On Jan 26, 12:38 am, Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenb...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
> Peter Moylan <p...@ozebelgDieSpammers.org> writes:
> > Herman Rubin wrote:
> >> In article <45b70b27$0$5743$afc38...@news.optusnet.com.au>, Peter
> >> Moylan <p...@ozebelgDieSpammers.org> wrote:
>
> >>> When we were first married my wife would open the window in the
> >>> morning and say "Lo, the morn!" Now she just says "Coup de grace."
> >> There is a book, _Fractured French_, which has French phrases which
> >> have totally different meanings if read by an English speaker who
> >> knows no French.
>
> > One of my favourites is the sign "Suivre la piste" which can be
> > found in some French parks. This obviously means "Follow the
> > intoxicated woman".Unfortunately, I don't have the albums handy,[1] so I'll have to do
> this from memory, but Woody Woodbury had a routine that included
> several of these. The ones I remember are "Jean d'Arc" (the bulb's
> burned out), "hors de combat" (the girls are fighting again) and
> "carte blanche" (they're bringing Blanche home in a wagon).
>
> [1] I was going to rip my parents' LPs the last time I was in Chicago,
> but I managed not to bring the connector I needed, and I didn't
> get a chance to go out and buy one.
>
> --
> Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
> HP Laboratories |If I am ever forced to make a
> 1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |choice between learning and using
> Palo Alto, CA 94304 |win32, or leaving the computer
> |industry, let me just say it was
> kirshenb...@hpl.hp.com |nice knowing all of you. :-)
mUs1Ka
> Oleg Lego wrote:
>> The Herman Rubin entity posted thusly:
>>
>>> There is a book, _Fractured French_, which has French phrases
>>> which have totally different meanings if read by an English
>>> speaker who knows no French.
>>
>> I wish I had that one! My father had a copy, and I used to read it at
>> least once per year. Some I remember...
>>
>> Sil vous plait - Not sterling.
>> Carte Blanche - Blanche is too drunk to walk.
>> A la carte - On the wagon.
>> Hors de Combat - The women are fighting again.
>>
> "Battle horse" is also a recognised translation of "hors de combat". Then
> there's
>
> Pas de deux -- Singles only.
> Je t'adore -- Shut the door.
> Défence de cracher -- We're out of bullets, use fireworks.
> Auspices -- Horse urine
>
> and a few hundred more that I've gone and forgotten. _Punch_ magazine
> had a regular column called "Let's parler franglais" at one time.
>
Someone will have to help with the spelling, but -
Frappe!, Frappe!
Qui e la?
Losti
Losti qui?
That's why I'm knocking.
I frequently play Debussy's "Girl with horses loins" and Kodaly's "Buttocks
Pressing Song".
--
Ray
UK
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Robert Bannister
> Oleg Lego wrote:
>
>> The Herman Rubin entity posted thusly:
>>
>>> There is a book, _Fractured French_, which has French phrases
>>> which have totally different meanings if read by an English
>>> speaker who knows no French.
>>
>>
>> I wish I had that one! My father had a copy, and I used to read it at
>> least once per year. Some I remember...
>>
>> Sil vous plait - Not sterling.
>> Carte Blanche - Blanche is too drunk to walk.
>> A la carte - On the wagon.
>> Hors de Combat - The women are fighting again.
>>
> "Battle horse" is also a recognised translation of "hors de combat".
> Then there's
>
> Pas de deux -- Singles only.
> Je t'adore -- Shut the door.
> Défence de cracher -- We're out of bullets, use fireworks.
> Auspices -- Horse urine
>
> and a few hundred more that I've gone and forgotten. _Punch_ magazine
> had a regular column called "Let's parler franglais" at one time.
>
Pièce de résistance - French bit that struggles.
--
Rob Bannister
Joe Fineman
> There is a book, _Fractured French_, which has French phrases which
> have totally different meanings if read by an English speaker who
> knows no French.
Voici l'anglais avec son sangfroid habituel.
Here comes the Englishman with his usual bloody cold.
--
--- Joe Fineman jo...@verizon.net
||: Whatever actually gets done has won a baloney contest. :||
Jitze Couperus
<rob...@it.net.au> wrote:
>>>
>>> Sil vous plait - Not sterling.
>>> Carte Blanche - Blanche is too drunk to walk.
>>> A la carte - On the wagon.
>>> Hors de Combat - The women are fighting again.
>>>
>> "Battle horse" is also a recognised translation of "hors de combat".
>> Then there's
>>
>> Pas de deux -- Singles only.
>> Je t'adore -- Shut the door.
>> Défence de cracher -- We're out of bullets, use fireworks.
>> Auspices -- Horse urine
>>
>> and a few hundred more that I've gone and forgotten. _Punch_ magazine
>> had a regular column called "Let's parler franglais" at one time.
>>
>
>Pièce de résistance - French bit that struggles.
>
Baguette - not only is she ugly, but likely under the age of consent
as well.
Jitze
Colin Fine
> "Arfur Million" <arfur_...@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>> "retrosorter" <hric...@sympatico.ca> wrote
>>>
>> oeuf.
>
> One Scottish(?) soldier talking to another in France: If you want an
> egg, just go to the farmhouse, knock on the door and ask for an "oof".
> If you want twa eggs, ask for twa oofs. The stupid biddy'll give you
> three, and you give one back.
>
I read that one (not about eggs specifically) many years ago as fact,
about a Scottish regiment in France during one of the World Wars. It has
never occurred to me before to doubt it.
Colin
Colin Fine
> Oleg Lego wrote:
> [...]
>> While reading the Hindi offerings there, I was reminded that I once
>> made up a pun that played on an Indian name. It isn't quite bilingual,
>> unless you consider names to have language, but here it is anyway.
>>
>> A folk-singing group was touring in India, and could not figure out
>> the audience reaction at certain times.
>>
>> Whenever they got to one of the refrains in a song, the vocalist would
>> shout out "Everybody sing!", but instead of singing, the audience
>> members just looked around at each other, saying "Well, we are not
>> *all* Singh!"
>
> That's an eppalling punjabi joke. They make me sikh. You should be
> kicked in the Hind quarters for anything simla.
>
> Which reminds me of Napier's apocryphal report on capturing part of the
> Indus Valley: "Peccavi".
>
"Peccavi - I've Sindh" wrote Lord Ellen so proud;
More briefly Dalhousie wrote "Vovi - I've Oudh".
Colin