[thechat] US criticised over Muslim checks

Drew Shiel ashiel at sportsinteraction.com
Wed Oct 9 09:39:01 CDT 2002


At 19:25 09/10/2002 +0500, Syed Zeeshan Haider wrote:
>From: "Chris Evans"
>To: <thechat at lists.evolt.org>
>Sent: October 09, 2002, Wednesday 4:51 AM
>Subject: Re: [thechat] US criticised over Muslim checks
>
> > Perhaps it is a language issue, but I still don't get the humor. Is it
> > perhaps the idiom of "gut" rather than "stomach" that makes it humorous?
> >   As a middle american, the language seems descriptive rather than
> > humorous, but I have seen some phrases from the Deep South or West ( of
> > the US) that strike me as funny when that wasn't the intent.
>
>I think that the cultural background decides about what would be humorous for
>one but not for other. Such language that William used often becomes a
>source of amusement for some people in our culture.
>Some professional comedians in Pakistan call it "tragic comedy", a comedy
>coming out of tragedy.

   Language and translations can make jokes or break them.

   For instance, it appears there's a joke in Japanese:

   Q: What's four plus two?
   A: *punch the person in the shoulder*

   This is apparently uproariously funny, if you speak Japanese (or
possibly a certain dialect, I'm not sure).

   And when we're in Finland, there are many occasions when Nina is
laughing at something said or written, but can't translate why it's funny
to English. Much of that is pun-based, but then there's also context,
personal history, and cultural references. For instance, if you don't know
of Eddie Izzard, the line "Le sange est dans l'arbre avec le President de
Burundi" [1] is probably just bizarre, not funny.

   Drew.

  [1] My spelling and grammar may be awful there. I'll defend this by
saying that I haven't touched French in seven years.


Drew Shiel                               webmaster at swiftpay.com
                                                     +353-1-2365705
------------------------------------------------------------------
Swiftpay -- The best way to pay online -- http://www.swiftpay.com




More information about the thechat mailing list