Here’s a funny thing, a joke… because you can never say you’ve learnt a language until you’ve understood a joke in it!
Humour is a good medicine for everything, and even though we can easily laugh at Mr Bean’s sketches as everything is mostly physical, it is very difficult to understand a joke.
Jokes
A joke involves so much cultural content that only a member of that society can understand. We have the perception in Spain that English humour is dull, strange and complicated.
However; I quite think the opposite. Humour can always be a great inspiration and funny if understood properly.
Lost in translation
I don’t like translating, well I love doing it, but I don’t like it when I’m learning or teaching a second language as it’s something different from the process of getting that language in our minds and let it grow within ourselves.
A translated joke is nearly impossible unless coincidence make the two languages so culturally close that enables us to do it.
Thinking Languages! 
🙂 very cute.
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Thank you!
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Back in college my French teacher (an actual Frenchman) told us a joke that went (translated) “Why are there trees on the Champs-Elysees? Because the Germans like to walk in the shade!” Talk about the importance of cultural context…
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That’s a good one! Btw we’ve got this one in Spain now that tells the story of the British, the German and Spanish guy, all three of them engineers, and having a conversation in a pub, and the spanish engineer asks: ‘gentlemen, what would you like to drink?’
It’s all about the context! Thank you for your comment!
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So sweet.
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Please keep us up to date like this. Thanks for sharing.
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