Author Archives: Noah Bernardo

Filipino Joke

Nationality: Filipino
Occupation: Catholic missionary
Performance Date: 4/26/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Tagalog

The following is from an interview between me and my friend, Nicole, at Blaze Pizza. Nicole is a Catholic missionary from the Phillipines. We were joined, as well, by another missionary named Carlos. Nicole shared with me a Filipino joke.

Nicole: “Why did the priest stop eating salt?”

Me: “Why?”

Nicole: “Because it was asin. ‘Asin’ means ‘salt’.”

Me: “In– In what language?”

Nicole: “Tagalog.”

Me: “Is that, like, from the Phillipines?”

Nicole: (nods)

Me: “Okay, that’s awesome. And where did you hear that from?”

Nicole: “From my… dad.”

Me: “Okay, did he tell it often, or…?”

Nicole: “Um… it was said among my friends, too.”

Me: “Oh, really? Like, around what age?”

Nicole: “Um… probably middle school…. (Laughs) that’s it.”

I really think this joke took full advantage of the Filipino-English pun potential and struck some serious gold.

“Está más perdido que el hijo de Lindbergh”

Nationality: Colombian
Occupation: Catholic missionary
Performance Date: 4/26/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The following is from an interview between me and my friend, Carlos, at Blaze Pizza. Carlos is a Catholic missionary from Colombia. We were joined, as well, by another missionary named Nicole. Carlos shared with me a saying in Spanish.

Carlos: “We have a saying in Spanish that is, ‘Está más perdido que el hijo de Lindbergh,’ which I’ve heard it all the time, which is used to make a reference to, like, when someone’s really lost. Like, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s more lost than the son of Lindbergh.’ And I’ve never known why they said that, but um– So like, the saying is, ‘He is more lost than the son of Lindbergh.’ It’s just saying, like, when someone is really lost they can say, ‘Está más perdido que el hijo de Lindbergh.’ I don’t know why, and I just looked it up, and apparently it’s connected to, like, this child abduction case in New Jersey, where, like, the son of Lindbergh was, like, abducted and was killed… and, like, I don’t know why we say that phrase in Spanish but it’s even in Wikipedia, like in Spanish there’s a saying that has this, I don’t know why.”

Me: “Where did you first hear this?”

Carlos: “My parents! Yeah, like, my family, everyone says that in Colombia. They just say, ‘Está más perdido que el hijo de Lindbergh,’ which is awful!”

Like Carlos, I found the existence of this phrase to be quite odd. Because it’s not as if the saying exerts some kind of a warning, or uses the tale of the New Jersey boy to teach children a lesson, making it a proverb. Instead, it’s just this comparison. This made me wonder if perhaps this saying was actually dark humor, but I’m not entirely sure.

“El mucho abarca poco aprieta”

Nationality: Colombian
Occupation: Catholic missionary
Performance Date: 4/26/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The following is from an interview between me and my friend, Carlos, at Blaze Pizza. Carlos is a Catholic missionary from Colombia. We were joined, as well, by another missionary named Nicole. Carlos shared with me some Spanish proverbs. This is one of them.

Carlos: “Then we have, ‘El mucho abarca poco aprieta,’ which means ‘Him who, like– him who has, like– is holding lots of things is unable to, like– is less able to hug it tight.’ So, he who is holding so much is able to, like, carry it less. So it means… the more you have, the less you actually, like, do it well, or carry it well.”

I found this proverb very relatable as a college student. The more things you try to do, you just end up spreading yourself too thin, and you can’t devote enough attention to any one thing. Becoming fragmented is a cross-cultural problem for those who wish to work hard.

“Más vale pájaro en mano que cientos volando”

Nationality: Colombian
Occupation: Catholic missionary
Performance Date: 4/26/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The following is from an interview between me and my friend, Carlos, at Blaze Pizza. Carlos is a Catholic missionary from Colombia. We were joined, as well, by another missionary named Nicole. Carlos shared with me some Spanish proverbs. This is one of them.

Carlos: “In Spanish, it’s, ‘Más vale pájaro en mano que cientos volando’. What that means is that, ‘A bird in your hand is worth more than a hundred birds flying away.’

Me: “Oh, okay, so kind of like ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’?”

Carlos: “I guess. I’ve never heard of that, but… (Laughs). Yeah, but I think I know… if it means what I think it means then yes.”

Nicole: “What does that mean?”

Carlos: “It means that, like, it’s better to have one solid thing than to have, like, many things kind of up in the air.”

Me: “Yeah that’s like ‘Bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’. Uh, and where did you hear that from?”

Carlos: “Uh, my mom. We just say it all the time. And my parents just say it like, yeah.”

I was immediately struck by the fact that Spanish and English have two proverbs that are so similar to each other. It is interesting that the Spanish one is more embellished with its one-hundred instead of two birds, as well as the fact that the birds are instead flying away, and just out of the person in question’s reach, whereas in the English proverb the birds are concealed from sight by the bush.

Whoppers

Nationality: USA
Occupation: Catholic missionary
Performance Date: 4/26/17
Primary Language: English

The following is from an interview between me and my friend, Brie, while I walked with her to the grocery store. She told me about a tradition in her family of telling stories called “Whoppers”, which were kind of like campfire stories. Her grandfather, or “papa”, was the one to mainly uphold this tradition within the family.

Brie: “In my family we always told ‘Whoppers’, so we’d always tell, like, stories around the campfire.”

Me: “‘Whoppers’, it was called?”

Brie: “Whoppers. And basically they’re just not true stories. And… he was really good at that, my papa…”

Me: “Can you give me an example of a Whopper?”

Brie: “The Green Monster…”

Me: “The what?”

Brie: “He would always say, like, The Green— or, what was it…? The Shadow… my papa would do this voice, like (raspy), ‘The Shadow,’ and it was like… I’m trying to remember. It was just terrifying. But… hold on, let me think real quick…”

Me: “How do you spell ‘Whopper’?”

Brie: “‘Whopper’? Um– I think, like a– you know, like a ‘Double Whopper’.”

Me: “Oh ok, like Burger King?”

Brie: (Laughs very hard) “Yep. No, it was just a thing in my family, telling Whoppers. I never was good at it, but my cousins would come up with really good Whoppers.”

Me: “Do you know where–uh– where your grandfather got, like, the term ‘Whopper’ from? Did he just make that up or what was it?”

Brie: “So he grew up in, like, South Boston… one of eight kids, and… you know, Scotch family, Catholic, um… he… I don’t– I think it was his dad that began the Whoppers.”

Me: “What made a good Whopper?”

Brie: “A good Whopper was, like, got you on the edge of your seat, like… you know, it was kinda scary, kinda suspenseful, but also, like, funny and far-fetched. So a little of, like, all of that, kinda.”

It was really cool to see that, basically, just by assigning a name to the more general idea of campfire stories, Brie’s family created a kind of tradition that was all their own.