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Maes

Jokes and cultural differences

Does a certian type of humour only work well within its own culture?  

30 members have voted

  1. 1. Does a certian type of humour only work well within its own culture?

    • Yes, due to language differences.
      3
    • Yes, due to cultural differences other than language.
      13
    • It`s too subjective to answer with yes or no.
      13
    • No, good humour should have universal value.
      1


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Are you aware of any kind of jokes or specific jokes which are considered acceptable/funny/witty within your own culture but would be regarded as chill cold/unfunny and/or totally unacceptable elsewhere?

Regarding my own country, I can cite "Little Helen" jokes (which are roughly equivalent to "dead baby" jokes), and "Jewish" and "Nigger" jokes.

Believe it or not, it's not widely considered racist (if at all) telling such jokes, probably because we have no such thing as "white guilt" or a colonial or even a nazi collaborators' past weighing on our shoulders, despite the majority of the population being non-jew and non-black. You can generally get away with these, unless you tell a "jew joke" involving SS and Hitler to a Greek Jew...

On the other hand, e.g. there's no equivalent for "the chicken and the road" jokes, and I doubt anyone in my country (including me) would find those funny no matter how well you translate them. Closest to them would be certain "nonsensical witty" jokes including wordplay.

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Cultural differences, taboos, language problems, even accents and many many more factors are relevant. A simple yes or no cannot answer the question. Good humour may be universal, or close to it, but doesn't have to be and, probably, isn't usually.

As an example of accents, these only work well in Scotland, and even then, only work best in and around Glasgow.

The first relies on knowledge of the accent, the second relies on knowledge of the accent, local personalities and local cultural references. No, I do not expect most people to get them. :P

1.
A man walks into a baker shop and asks "Is that a cake or a merengue". The baker answers "no, you're right enough, it's a cake".

2.
There was a news item on the TV the other day about Jack McConnell or, as he is known in Bearsden, Jack My Candle.



However, I will concede that, even if you do get them, they probably aren't particularly funny. :P

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There aren't just humour differences within cultures. There are humour differences between sub-cultures, sub-sub-cultures, and sub-sub-sub-cultures with their own uniquely absurd idiolects. Sub-cultures have their own humour that would seem nonsensical and offensive to members of their larger culture. Look at any 4chan meme for a good example. They are likely to leave the larger population feeling repulsed, or at least blinking in confusion. A smaller population exists who "gets it," and can look at one and get a chuckle. And then, there are those select few who have witnessed the meme's adoption, expansion, subversion and combination with other memes and can appreciate them on yet another level. I wouldn't say that humour is objectively good or bad based on whether it has universal appeal - it's arguable that no such thing as "universal humour" exists at all.

Of course, our brains are made of the same stuff. We all laugh because of essentially the same social, logical and biological causes. But whether you, personally, will enjoy a specific joke depends on an unfathomably high number of external factors, historical factors and internal traits.

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Over here "Gallego" jokes are traditionally common (making fun of Spaniards, particularly from Galicia), but this is so old that I don't think it's really common or relevant anymore.

Every social group has its own humor, which doesn't work all that well among others, and puns usually lose much of their meaning when translated.

Maes said:
Believe it or not, it's not widely considered racist (if at all) telling such jokes, probably because we have no such thing as "white guilt" or a colonial or even a nazi collaborators' past weighing on our shoulders, despite the majority of the population being non-jew and non-black. You can generally get away with these, unless you tell a "jew joke" involving SS and Hitler to a Greek Jew...

That's actually quite believable. It's not despite the absence of Jews or blacks, but because they aren't there to complain. With a lot of Turkish ancestry, antisemitism against Jews is not really surprising.

Enjay said:
A man walks into a baker shop and asks "Is that a cake or a merengue". The baker answers "no, you're right enough, it's a cake".

"Is that a cake, or am I wrong?" The other one's similar (and easier), but also seems to have a sexual connotation.

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myk said:

"Is that a cake, or am I wrong?" The other one's similar (and easier), but also seems to have a sexual connotation.

Correct!

"Am I wrong", said with a certain kind of Glaswegian accent would be almost indistiguishable with "a merengue". Something like "Ahm ah rang?"

The sexual connotation is purely coincidence. The First Minister of Scotland before the current one was called Jack McConnell. "Ma connell" (or probably more closely a "ma cunnel" (again, sexual connotations are coincidental)) would be how a lot of Glaswegians might pronounce the words "my candle". However, in Bearsden (being a "posher" part of Glasgow where people are more like to have, or effect, a "proper" accent) people would be far less likely to say "ma cunnel" when talking about their waxy, flaming illumination device.

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I just found out that apparently, the peace sign is actually an obscene gesture in some places. It's a good thing I learned this now because I often greet or say goodbye to people using a peace sign.

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I don't know why people would call that a peace sign. It's a victory sign, but over here it represents the major political party (Peronism) and is not really used for anything else.

If I am not mistaken it's also used to mark someone as a cuckold, especially when doing it on them from behind when they are not looking. Taking that into account, this picture seems pretty amusing. In Spanish cuckold is "cornudo", which translates literally to "horny" (with horns). This difference could easily twist the meaning of a badly translated joke, either way.

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Enjay said:

A man walks into a baker shop and asks "Is that a cake or a merengue". The baker answers "no, you're right enough, it's a cake".

I've watched enough episodes of "Taggart" to understand that one.

Kid Airbag said:

I just found out that apparently, the peace sign is actually an obscene gesture in some places. It's a good thing I learned this now because I often greet or say goodbye to people using a peace sign.

Depends on where and how it's used

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Being an American, it's considered taboo to make jokes about anyone's race, and to an extent other sorts of things like religion or gender. However, people do it in private all the time anyway. Dumb blond jokes seem to be pretty accepted all over the place in America though. (Like "Why did the blond have square tits?" "Because she forgot to take the tissue out of the box.")

Enjay said:

1.
A man walks into a baker shop and asks "Is that a cake or a merengue". The baker answers "no, you're right enough, it's a cake".

2.
There was a news item on the TV the other day about Jack McConnell or, as he is known in Bearsden, Jack My Candle.



However, I will concede that, even if you do get them, they probably aren't particularly funny. :P

Heh, I do get them. Then again, I've watched so much British comedy that I'm fairly good at recognising all the British Isle accents. They kind of remind me of this joke from Young Ones:

"Hey look, Ama Zulu!"
"Oh yeah? I'm a Glaswegian!"

myk said:

If I am not mistaken it's also used to mark someone as a cuckold, especially when doing it on them from behind when they are not looking. Taking that into account, this picture seems pretty amusing. In Spanish cuckold is "cornudo", which translates literally to "horny" (with horns). This difference could easily twist the meaning of a badly translated joke, either way.

In America, we call that giving someone "bunny ears". People (mostly kids) do it in pictures just as a way of ribbing whoever you do it to.

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Sometimes, it's just the crowd in general.

If you remember my "Switch from ADD to ADHD" post, this joke at work and everywhere else (real life(tm)), it was a hit. Here, the other DooM site, bombed. Here, it wound up in "Post Hell".

Jokes: You can't win them all, and everyone.

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Part of that may be the cultural thing too. Now, I'm assuming that the ADD/ADHD joke was a play on the style of adverts that have been trying to persuade people to switch to HD radio (in the US?). However, I've never seen one of those and had never heard of HD radio. It's just not something that I have seen/heard pushed at all. I've no idea if it is even something that is planned for the UK. Judging by the number of "WTF is HD radio" posts in the thread about HD radio, I'm not alone and my guess is that your joke missed its target audience here.

Mind you, threads that serve to be nothing more than a post telling a joke tend to be helled pretty quickly anyway, so it's not a huge surprise.

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Enjay said:

Mind you, threads that serve to be nothing more than a post telling a joke tend to be helled pretty quickly anyway, so it's not a huge surprise.


Right. I remember the thread he's talking about, and this is why it was canned.

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One of my favorite Russian jokes.
So this Russian man is walking home from the bar, and everything is completely covered in snow. The only landmark he can see is a fence, so he starts walking along it trying to find his way home. Eventually he comes to another drunk Russian man lying against the fence in the snow. He yells at him "Get up, you're disgusting you lazy proletariat" to which the man replies "Don't judge me demagogue, what are you going to do when you run out of fence?"

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Heh, political jokes involving iron-courtain humour are hard to get unless you lived in that era, or if you heard a lot of them in the right environment.

Something completely different, about professional jokes:

One day, a man was taking a stroll down the countryside, and at one moment he was standing in the middle of a crop field. Above him, a hot air balloon started descending upon the field and and hovered 6 feet above the ground. The man in the balloon asked the man in the field:

-I am lost and I need some directions. Can you tell me where I am?"

-You're in a hot air balloon, hovering 6 feet above a crop field.

-How can I tell that you are an engineer...

-How so?

-Because you provided me with precise, yet completely useless information.

-And you must be a top manager...

-That's right! How could you tell?

-Because you obviously don't know where you are nor where you are going, yet you're quick to blame the tech guys about ir!

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Kid Airbag said:

I just found out that apparently, the peace sign is actually an obscene gesture in some places. It's a good thing I learned this now because I often greet or say goodbye to people using a peace sign.


Here in the UK, it depends which way round you hold your hand. Palm forward is inoffensive (and indeed originally meant "victory", but since the sixties is more often used to mean "peace") while back-of-the-hand forward is offensive.

It supposedly originates from when the Normans ruled much of Britain, and used to chop off the fingers of suspected native rebels to prevent the use of longbows. Two fingers up were therefore used as a taunt when rebels fought the Normans in battle.

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NiGHTMARE said:

Here in the UK, it depends which way round you hold your hand. Palm forward is inoffensive (and indeed originally meant "victory", but since the sixties is more often used to mean "peace") while back-of-the-hand forward is offensive.

Although Churchill wold use it either way around to mean victory.



NiGHTMARE said:

It supposedly originates from when the Normans ruled much of Britain, and used to chop off the fingers of suspected native rebels to prevent the use of longbows. Two fingers up were therefore used as a taunt when rebels fought the Normans in battle.

A commonly told story of which there is a little evidence to believe that it may be true. Apparently there was the threat of finger removal at Agincourt, but little or no evidence that it actually happened, nor that people used the gesture to taunt the French about it.


Here's a joke I was told by a Glaswegian friend a few years ago:

A man goes to Belfast for a holiday but had heard about the sectarianism in Belfast. Sure enough, within a few days a man carrying a rifle and wearing a ski mask walked up to him in the street and asked "What side you on - Catholic or Protestant?".

Worried that whichever answer he gave, the tourist tried to hedge his bets and sidestep the issue completely. "Muslim" he replied.

"Ah" said the armed man, "but are you a Catholic Muslim or a Protestant Muslim?"


That in itself requires a bit of cultural knowledge. However, an friend of mine was told a (more sinister?) variation of it when he was on tour with the army in Bosnia (and it was a Bosnian, not a Brit who told him).

A man goes to Belfast for a holiday but had heard about the sectarianism in Belfast. Sure enough, within a few days a man carrying a rifle and wearing a ski mask walked up to him in the street and asked "What side you on - Catholic or Protestant?".

Worried that whichever answer he gave, the tourist tried to hedge his bets and sidestep the issue completely. "Muslim" he replied.

"Well" said the armed man, cocking his rifle "aren't I the luckiest Bosnian Serb in Belfast?"

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Enjay said:

Although Churchill wold use it either way around to mean victory.

Maybe he means it as "hah, sod off, Hitler!"

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"Knock Knock"


"Who's there?"


"The Interrupting Cow."


"The interru-"


"MOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

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Enjay said:

Although Churchill wold use it either way around to mean victory.

Churchill rarely used the "palm-in" version once he'd learnt it's meaning.

I've found the Political Correctness in Star Trek spin-off's to be a reliable source of unintended humour, especially when it involves different species - maybe that's just me.

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GreyGhost said:

I've found the Political Correctness in Star Trek spin-off's to be a reliable source of unintended humour, especially when it involves different species - maybe that's just me.

Yeah, I know what you mean. The fucking Prime Directive makes me want to punch in the face. Hopefully some alien people with pre-warp technology.

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GreyGhost said:
[B
I've found the Political Correctness in Star Trek spin-off's to be a reliable source of unintended humour, especially when it involves different species - maybe that's just me. [/B]


Yeah... warhammer 40k has a much improved means of alien diplomacy... ;)

Say, for example, two Space Marines land on the Ewok world of Endor.

"There's nothing on this world but alien heretic scum. They are a clear threat to humanity. In this particular situation, I am forced, in the name of the Emperor, to recommend mass extermination."

"Uhhh... Sir. That's what we always do."

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Kyka said:

"Knock Knock"


"Who's there?"


"The Interrupting Cow."


"The interru-"


"MOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Bahahahah! That one's cool.

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NiGHTMARE said:

Here in the UK, it depends which way round you hold your hand. Palm forward is inoffensive (and indeed originally meant "victory", but since the sixties is more often used to mean "peace") while back-of-the-hand forward is offensive.


See, the palm-inward form is the variation that I, and a lot of my generation, use as a greeting/parting over here in the U.S.

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Two jokes my dad has told me, which I find amusing. The first one is so generically funny that it makes me grit my teeth everytime I hear it.

So this duck walks into a bar and he asks the bartender "Hey, do you have any grapes?" To which the bartender replies "No, we don't have any grapes, now get the hell out of here". The next day the duck walks into the bar again and asks the bartender if he has any grapes. The bartender says "No, we don't have any grapes, and if you ask me that again I'll nail your bill to the wall." The next day the duck walks back in and asks the bartender "Hey, do you have any nails?" The bartender replies "No I don't have any damn nails". The duck sits there for a second, then asks "Oh, well do you have any grapes?"

So this accountant gets sent to jail for embezzling. He's a tiny little white man, trembling like a leaf, and he's scared as hell about going to jail because he's heard all the stories about people getting raped. First night they throw him in a cell with this huge black guy named Bubba. He sits in the corner trembling and staring at this guy for a good three hours. Finally Bubba says "Hey, let's play husband and wife. Do you want to be the husband or the wife?" The accountant replies "Well, honestly I'd rather be the husband." Bubba replies "Alright, now get over here and suck your wifes dick."

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Well, Dr.Chamberlain was my English teacher but that never stopped us from making dingo jokes between each other, so I guess not.

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A favourite from several years ago-

A guy walks into a bar with his monkey and orders a beer. While the bartender is getting the beer, the monkey jumps up on the bar, runs across it, grabs another customers sandwich and eats it. The person complains to the bartender and the bartender approaches the guy saying, "Did you see what your stupid monkey just did? He just ran across the bar and ate my customers sandwich."
The guy replies, "Sorry about that. Let me pay for a new sandwich." He grabs his monkey and leaves.
The next day, they come in again. The guy orders another beer and sits down. As the bartender is getting it, the monkey runs across to the pool table and eats the 8-ball. The bartender sees what just happened and angrily approaches the guy saying, "Did you see what your stupid monkey just did?! He just ate my 8-ball."
The guy replies, "I'm sorry, I'll pay for the damages, and the beer and leave." And so they leave.
About a week later the guy returns to the bar with his monkey. He asks the bartender for his usual, "1 beer please." As the bartender is getting it, the monkey jumps on the bar, takes a cherry, sticks it up his ass, takes it out, and eats it. The bartender looks on in disgust and says, "Did you see what your dumbass monkey just did?? He just took that cherry, stuck it up his ass, took it out and ate it!!"
The guy replies, "I'm not surprised. Ever since he ate that 8-ball, he's been measuring everything first."

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Enjay said:

Part of that may be the cultural thing too. Now, I'm assuming that the ADD/ADHD joke was a play on the style of adverts that have been trying to persuade people to switch to HD radio (in the US?). {SNIP}

Actually, it was about the switchover from analog broadcast to digital broadcast television ("....make sure your TV, is DTV", versus the joke "Make sure your ADD, is ADHD").
By February 17'th, those in the States who have TV's with antennas are going to stop working, unles you either get an HDTV, a new "regular" TV (digtial capable), or get a converter box so the old TV will still work.

Link: http://dtvanswers.com
More info. This does affect about 20 million TV sets, at least.

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