Sense(s) of Humour

[SleepyWitch]

Lost in translation


The Brits often assume that Germans have no sense of humour. In truth, writes comedian Stewart Lee, it's a language problem. The peculiarities of German sentence construction simply rule out the lazy set-ups that British comics rely on ...

Tuesday May 23, 2006
The Guardian

German television presenter Harald Schmidt is dressed in a Bobsled athlete costume during a TV show. Photograph: Joerg Carstensen/EPA
German television presenter Harald Schmidt is dressed in a bobsled costume during a TV show. Photograph: Joerg Carstensen/EPA

In 1873, the British scholar and traveller Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain visited Japan. He recorded his views of the nation's music in his subsequent book, Japanese Things: Being Notes On Various Subjects Connected With Japan. "Music," he wrote, "if that beautiful word must be allowed to fall so low as to denote the strummings and squealings of Orientals, is supposed to have existed in Japan since mythological times ... but (its) effect is not to soothe, but to exasperate beyond all endurance the European breast."

Article continues
Today this view seems shameful; we can see that it was not, as Chamberlain assumed, that Japan had no musical ability, but that it had no musical tradition that a Victorian professor could recognise. The Japanese musical vocabulary was simply utterly alien to him.

Similarly, a commonly held contemporary British view is that the Germans have no sense of humour. But can this be possible? Can there genuinely be a nation incapable of laughter, or is it just that the German language of laughter differs so greatly from our own, that it appears non-existent?
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read the full article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1780906,00.html

Lote asked me to teach him the art of German humour.

What's your country's typical sense of humour like? does it differ a lo from that in other countries? What kinds of things do people find funny? Do you have jokes about particular groups of people?

[DickZ]

...What's your country's typical sense of humour like? does it differ a lo from that in other countries? What kinds of things do people find funny? Do you have jokes about particular groups of people?

I doubt that anybody could put a single label on the United States' sense of humor. Maybe it's because the United States is comprised of people from all different lands, or maybe it's simply because a single label couldn't be put on any country, regardless of its composition.

[TheFifthElement]

I doubt that anybody could put a single label on the United States' sense of humor. Maybe it's because the United States is comprised of people from all different lands, or maybe it's simply because a single label couldn't be put on any country, regardless of its composition.

But it is true that the Germans have no sense of humour, and try getting a poolside deckchair when you're on holiday, phew!

Jus' kiddin Sleepy

[SleepyWitch]

But it is true that the Germans have no sense of humour, and try getting a poolside deckchair when you're on holiday, phew!

Jus' kiddin Sleepy

I know hey, those are ASBO white trash uncultured lower middle class Germans. you can joke about them all you want... except that it's not politically correct to call them all the things I said

[SleepyWitch]

I doubt that anybody could put a single label on the United States' sense of humor. Maybe it's because the United States is comprised of people from all different lands, or maybe it's simply because a single label couldn't be put on any country, regardless of its composition.

hey, I totally agree Dick. but maybe there are some stereotypes about the American sense of humour? The Brits often say that Americans don't understand irony. But Virgil (another member here) has never had any trouble understanding my extremely subtle and hardly perceptible irony

[Sweets America]

hey, I totally agree Dick. but maybe there are some stereotypes about the American sense of humour? The Brits often say that Americans don't understand irony. But Virgil (another member here) has never had any trouble understanding my extremely subtle and hardly imperceptible irony

OK, if someone had told me that before, maybe I wouldn't have had as much problems with my ex boyfriend.

[TheFifthElement]

I know hey, those are ASBO white trash uncultured lower middle class Germans. you can joke about them all you want... except that it's not politically correct to call them all the things I said

Aah, they're the one's having a fist fight with the pasty skinhead Brits in their union jack shorts and Manchester United t-shirts, and their girlfriends with the Burberry bikini's, sipping Lambrini with their egg n' chips at 9:30 in the morning.

[AuntShecky]

about the American sense of humor. Russell Baker is an expert on this, and the following opinion is not necessarily his:

the previous posters -- Dick Z etc., are eminently correct in stating that many cultures "blend" in the U.S.--This is especially true in New York City. (For proof, just take a look at the wording of the headlines in the two New York tabloids.)

the Jewish/Yiddish sense of humor is unparallelled. We think of it evolving from the Borscht Belt in the Catskills, but it's everywhere in this country. Most if not all of the great comedians have emerged from this
heritage.

The vaunted Irish sense of humor is true, begorra! Part of
it comes from the blarney (the gift o' the gab) and sure, the wit, don't cha know. Also as a group of people few have "suffered" as much as the Irish, except the Jewish folks, known so well for their sense of humor (see above.)

Likewise the African Americans: their humor (exemplified by comedians as divergent as Dick Gregory, Bill Cosby, Chris Rock, the late great Richard Pryor and the wonderful
Wanda Sykes) partly stems from social consciousness but also for the same reasons for the sense of humor of the Irish and the Jews (see above.)

Also, we have a rural tradition in our humor. I don't mean the hayseed-y stuff that was on "Hee Haw"-- I mean the really good insight into human nature, human foibles begun by Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln. If you enjoy the midwest wit of Jean Shepherd and Garrison Keillor, they both come from this rural tradition.

Not to mention the "sophisticated" repartee of the Algonquin wits, continued for a while by the late Jack Paar
and Dick Cavett, rare these days since we Americans seem to have lost our sense of irony (as a previous poster astutely mentioned.) Recognizing irony is a mark of an learned person (although you don't necessarily need formal schooling to be learned, you get me?)

Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, and think about this one --George Carlin, even though he's a New York boy -- combined elements of both the midwestern rural and the sophisticate -- which proves the point, perhaps that American humor is indeed a melting pot.

(And if you're melting your "pot", you're not doing it right!
I mean, so I've heard. . . .)

[Niamh]

I wouldnt even know where to start with discribing Irish Humour!

[Lote-Tree]

But it is true that the Germans have no sense of humour, and try getting a poolside deckchair when you're on holiday, phew!

Supreme Being you got in there first!

[Taliesin]

We Estonians have our sense of humour surgically removed after we are born.

[LadyW]

But it is true that the Germans have no sense of humour, and try getting a poolside deckchair when you're on holiday, phew!

I travelled to Italy this year, Calabria. The resort was like a German Butlins to be perfectly honest, haha. I had the same problem with the sunbeds... My dad walked down to the pool in the morning to put our towels down for after breakfast and some crazy woman who happened to be German literally threw a towel over his head and dived on the bed for dear life. Quite funny really...
Now donot mistake me here, I am not criticizing every single person in Germany; I have a few friends over there myself. But generally speaking the German people in the resort were so rude - pushing in front when in a queue rather violently in some cases too.

[AimusSage]

Martian humour is somewhat difficult to understand for humans. It took me a while. I needed to have surgery first. You see, even though it is not physical in nature, you just can't appreciate it with less than 6 ears. That's the bare minimum, 10 or more ears is highly recommended.

[Nossa]

I wouldnt even know where to start with discribing Irish Humour!

One of my friends believe that Irish people are the funniest people on the planet

As for us, I think we're satirical, and we make jokes even in our worst conditions (that's why jokes are in a high rate now in Egypt )

[SleepyWitch]

We Estonians have our sense of humour surgically removed after we are born.

the operation must have gone wrong with you and my Estonian 'real life' friend Helje
why do you do this? because Estonian humour is so funny it's a danger to the public?