Tag: jokes

Language jokes


Dr. D. laughing in Spanish.

As you may have noticed, I like jokes. Here’s a riddle. What do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person who speaks one language? American.

A Swiss man, looking for directions, pulls up at a bus stop where two American tourists are waiting.
“Entschuldigung, koennen sie deutsch sprechen?” he asks. The two Americans just stare at him.
“Excusez-moi, parlez vous francais?” he tries.
The two men continue to stare.
“Parlare italiano?” No response.
“Hablan ustedes español?” Still nothing.
The Swiss man drives off, extremely disgusted. The first American turns to the second and says, “Y’know, maybe we should learn a foreign language.”
“Why?” says the other. “That guy knew four languages, and it didn’t do him any good.”

A man tells his friend, “I’m going to learn German.” His friend says that German is a hard language to learn. The man replies, “How hard can it be? I’ve heard three-year-olds speaking it.

“I’m glad I wasn’t born in France.” “Why’s that?” “I don’t speak French!”

A man gave his wife a parrot. The next day, they’re eating dinner and the man notices that the parrot isn’t in its cage. He asks, “Where’s the parrot.” The wife says, “We’re having it for dinner.” “What? That parrot spoke three languages!” “Well, why didn’t it say something?”

A student fell asleep during an English professor’s lecture on pronouns. Upset, the professor wakes up the student by asking him to name two pronouns. The student replies, “Who? Me?” “Very good,” says the professor.

This linguistics professor was lecturing the class. “In English,” he explained, “a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, such as Spanish, a double negative is still a negative.” “However,” the professor continued, “there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.” Immediately, a voice from the back of the room piped up: “Yeah … right …”

DDR

Politically (in)correct


Riddle Comedy Club, Alsip, Illinois

I haven’t been to a comedy club for a couple of months now, but I keep thinking of one joke in particular that I heard while I was there. You have to remember that comedy clubs are the last bastion of politically incorrect jokes. So, everything goes there. In a way, it’s very refreshing to be able to go back in time a couple of decades or so to when free speech meant exactly that.

Anyway, the joke I keep remembering makes me laugh every time I recall it. I don’t even remember the name of the comedian, but I saw him at Riddles at the open mic night. “Are there any Mexicans here?” he asked, I assumed he asked this because he was not of the Mexican persuasion. No one answered up–not even me. I wanted to say, “I’m Mexican,” but I couldn’t get the nerve to shout it out. Besides, I wanted to hear what he would say if no Mexicans were present.

After a long silent pause, he asked, “How many Mexicans does it take to change a light bulb?” No one answered and after another long pause, he said, “One. They’re just like everyone else!” And everyone laughed, but I think I laughed the loudest.

DDR

Barrel of Laughs


2509 W. Marquette Road
Chicago, Illinois 69629

Last night, I went to a comedy club for the first time in a very long time. I went to Bill Brady’s Barrel of Laughs in Oak Lawn, Illinois. I remember Bill Brady from when he was at the Comedy Womb. I can honestly say that Bill Brady is just as funny today as he was back then. I had meant to write my own standup comedy routine to perform last night, but I never actually finished editing my act, so I went to observe the new talent on Open Mic Night and hopefully learn from them. Well, I’m not sure if I learned any practical lessons since all these comedians reminded me of my past experiences on stage. At least, I observed that performing standup comedy sure has changed for the better! The atmosphere was very congenial and conducive for training new comedians. They had a sign on the stage that prohibited heckling the comedians! Now that’s what I call coddling the comedians.

Since I was a young boy, I have had this secret desire to be a standup comedian and I’m trying to get my nerve up to go on stage again after a brief hiatus of about 21 years. I’m not sure what ever attracted me to standup comedy in the first place since I stuttered and spoke broken English until I was in high school. Whenever I saw comedians on television, I always watched them with affectionate laughter and listened to their every word, memorizing their jokes so I could repeat them later. Since I live in Chicago, which is a breeding ground for all kinds of comedians, I eventually tried my hand at standup comedy with mixed success. My main problem was my stage fright that always hindered me from being comfortable before a large crowd, but not painful enough to prevent me from performing. I worked on improving my comedy act and eventually performed on a local cable TV show no one had ever heard of, including me, until they asked me to be on the show.

Before I ever actually performed standup comedy, my friends Vito, Jim, and I went to some comedy clubs to observe the comedians. We planned everything for our first performances. We tried working together as a team at first, but we were too much of individuals to work together as a team. Eventually, we each wrote our own act that we would perform individually. We helped each other writing jokes for each other and polishing each other’s act. This was all fun and nerve-racking at the same time! Although we never mentioned it to each other, I know we really dreaded our first time on stage. We memorized, rehearsed, and then performed our acts to each other before our debut. We didn’t all perform for the first time on the same night because we performed when we had managed to control our stage fright enough go on stage. I believe Jim, the bravest of the bunch, performed first, followed by me and then Vito. Needless to say, we each made a disastrous debut! But we were extremely proud of ourselves for following through with our plan and going on stage.

Now that I think of it, I’m starting to not only feel that same fear again, but also that same hunger for success again. That’s why I plan to go on stage soon. But first I must fine tune my jokes.

DDR

My mother’s jokes



Maria del Carmen Martínez Valdivia de Rodríguez

My mother and I had a love / hate relationship, but what I remember the best about her was her sense of humor. She always knew how to make me laugh when I was little. She always told me jokes, by way of acting them out, and I would always laugh; when she repeated a joke, I would still laugh because she would always tell it slightly differently and the joke would be funny to me all over again.

Whenever I heard new jokes, I would tell them to her. She would always laugh even after I told them several times. And she wasn’t faking the laughter, either. Jokes, especially her own, always made her laugh. Everyone in my mother’s family enjoyed laughing–a lot! Whenever we went to Mexico, we always sat around after a meal telling jokes. Everyone always had a joke to tell. And someone would always request to hear their favorite joke. Some jokes made everyone laugh repeatedly. My mother usually told a lot of jokes and would be asked to repeat some of her jokes. I don’t remember all her jokes because it’s been a long time since I thought of them, but I will do my best to recall some of them. Here are a few of her jokes:

  • A woman is on an airplane with her baby. The man sitting next to her is continuously making fun of the baby and repeatedly telling the woman how ugly her baby is. The woman finally breaks down in tears. The flight attendant notices the commotion and approaches the woman. “What’s wrong?” asks the flight attendant. The woman says, “This man keeps bothering us.” The flight attendant finds another seat for the woman and her baby. The woman is satisfied with the new seat and thanks the flight attendant who tells the woman, “Everything will be okay now. Just let me get a banana for your monkey.”
  • A motorcyclist wore his jacket backwards to prevent the wind from hitting his chest. He crashes into a tree and a passerby tries to help him. When the ambulance arrives, the paramedics ask, “How’s he doing?” The Good Samaritan answers, “He was doing fine until I turned his head to face the right way.”
  • I can’t remember exactly how this joke went and I probably won’t tell it well, either, but it’s about a man who lives in the rural area of the state of Veracruz in Mexico. He must go to the big city of Veracruz, Veracruz, for the first time in his life and take the train to visit his dying grandmother. He has never seen a train before, so he asks what it looks like. They tell him that it’s big and black and puffs smoke. When he arrives in the city of Veracruz, he sees a well-dressed black man wearing a suit and smoking a big cigar. So, he jumps on the black man’s back thinking that he’s the train.

Of course, just reading the jokes now, they don’t seem as funny. You must imagine mother acting them out. Part of what made them funny was how my mother tried not to laugh as she anticipated the punchline. When she finally reached the end of the joke, she would laugh the loudest. Those jokes still make me laugh when I imagine my mother telling them. ¡Ja, ja!

DDR