Puns?

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

Are they common in languages other than English?

[Atheist-Lite]

Are they common in languages other than English?

Ask Morrisey?

[cogwheel]

not so much in Lojban

10. Can you make jokes in an unambiguous language?

Most humor arises from situation and character and is as funny in Lojban as in any language. Humor based on word play, of course, is language-dependent. Lojban has no homonyms, and hence no simple puns; puns derived from similar sounds are still possible, and have in fact been attempted (for example in the Lojban translation of Alice in Wonderland). Since Lojban will almost always be a second language, bilingual puns and word play abound, often based on the relative ambiguity of the other languages involved. Humor based on internal grammatical ambiguity is of course impossible in Lojban, but humor based on nonsensical statements, or on logical structures that would be difficult to clearly express in another language, becomes easier.

As speakers become fluent, and conventional phrases come into use, Lojban will develop its own forms of spoonerisms and subtle puns. Unique forms of Lojban word-play have already turned up; they exploit the way small variations in Lojban grammar create unexpected variations in meaning, and the capability to simply express rather mind-boggling relationships. Like all word-play, these lose zest when translated into other languages.

Related to humor is the aphorism: the pithy saying that gains pungency or poignancy from terse, elegant phrasing. Lojban seems as capable of aphorisms as any language, perhaps more than most; however, because the language is so young, few such aphorisms have been devised to date.

[cogwheel]

My wife and I were walking through Downtown Disney and I hear a man behind me yell:

"Star! Sky! Get back over here!"

I looked at my wife and said "If they have a boy they should name him Hutch."

I still cover that shoulder whenever I tell a pun near her <.<

[Jason]

He who would pun would pick a pocket.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Ayaan gloves puns.

[Ayaan]

Ayaan gloves puns.

[Kristie]

I'm adding everyone that contributes a puns to this thread to my foe list!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm adding everyone that contributes a puns to this thread to my foe list!

Um, can I have toe to the foe list, please?

[MrFungus420]

I'm adding everyone that contributes a puns to this thread to my foe list!

What foe?

[Sean Hayden]

I'd like to contribute this one:

[MrFungus420]

A zookeeper discovered that if he fed baby seagulls to dolphins, they stopped aging. Of course, before too long, he had cleared all of the seagulls out of the zoo grounds so he had to go farther and farther afield to find more.

One day, while he was out, a lion escaped. When he snuck back in with his cargo of seagull chicks, he found the lion sleeping and lying across his path. So, he very carefully stepped over the lion so as to not wake it. As soon as he did, he was arrested. The charge:

Transporting underaged gulls across a staid lion for immortal porpoises.

[Rum]

They are in Cantonese, which I grew up speaking fairly fluently. The language is monosyllabic and to extend the limited available sounds they are spoken tonally. Thus the word 'cut' (phonetically spelled there) can mean variously 'egg' and 'prostitute' as well as several other things depending on tone and emphasis as well as context.

Much hilarity ensues...

[colubridae]

Haben zie gekochtes eier?

Have you got boiled eggs?

(eier is also a euphemism for testicles)

[MiM]

I just noticed I almost accidentally made one in Finnish, so yes they do exist. But not as frequently as in English, in any of the other languages I am fluent in.