Tag Archives: humor

Salvadoran Joke Proverb

Nationality: Salvadoran
Age: 50
Occupation: Chief Building Engineer
Residence: North Hills, California
Performance Date: 04/20/17
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

” No te mais, aquien temio”

Literal Translation: Do not be afraid, of he has been afraid

Joke translation: Do not be afraid, of he who has peed on you

The literal translation comes from the proper Spanish from Spain. The way it is used in El Salvador is they make the last word into two words turning it into “pee.” This joke is usually told to  friend or close family member that is having a bad day or is anxious. My father heard this joke from his friends.

I asked my dad for some folklore while walking to the store.

My informant is a building engineer. He migrated to the United States form El Salvador when he was 16 years old. He grew up in a city in El Salvador. Lots of the folklore he has heard has come from his family.

What is interesting about this piece is how a slight shift in space of a word can change the meaning of the whole proverb. Salvadorans are known for being jokers. They like to call it being “trucha.”

9/11: The TRUTH

Nationality: African-American (Ivory Coast/Scottish/Welsh)
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Shoreline, WA
Performance Date: 4/15/17
Primary Language: English

Context: I was chatting with my roommate about his time in marching band in high school, and the following is one of the encounters he had during one of his festival trips.

Background: My roommate is a psychology minor, and one of the aspects of the subject he’s always been interested in is the part of the human brain that induces paranoia. Because of this, he’s been invested in conspiracy theories for a long time.

Dialogue: (Note: C denotes myself, B denotes my roommate)

C: So what about the van?

B: Oh, 9/11!

C: 9/11, tell me about 9/11!

B: OK! First of all, inside job. Second of all, I was in Victoria, British Columbia on a band trip, and, um, we were getting ready to march in this parade, and we saw this van driving around the– the– I guess the Parliament building? Um, and it said on the side of it, “9/11 was an inside job.” It was like a 9/11 truther van. And I thought, “Why… do you care? You’re in Canada… 9/11 did not happen in Canada.” I just thought that was interesting. I had a lot of questions, first of all… “What?” Second of all, um, like like like are these Americans doing this? Uh, if so, why are they in Canada, why are they in Victoria, British Columbia? Um… you know you’re not even near New York at this point!

Analysis: I actually debated with myself over what to categorize this piece as. The central bit of folklore revolves around a conspiracy theory regarding what “really” happened on 9/11, which is a tragic day in American history. However, the countless people who insist that 9/11 was an “inside job” (AKA a disaster orchestrated by the US government itself) have put such ridiculous and unreal theories out there, that it’s nearly impossible not to laugh at something like a “9/11 truther van” driving around. Because of this, and because of the fact that this theory is a belief shared in online communities without consideration for reality, I decided to categorize it as both Humor and as a Folk Belief.

Annotation: My roommate’s encounter is not nearly the first instance where the “9/11 was an inside job” belief popped up. In fact, in the same conversation, my roommate mentioned the documentary Loose Change as a good place to go deeper into the conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11.

Difficult Difficult Lemon Difficult

Nationality: African-American (Ivory Coast/Scottish/Welsh)
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Shoreline, WA
Performance Date: 4/5/17
Primary Language: English

Context: My roommate discovered this meme one day, and it prompted a discussion about the various levels of depth it reached.

Background: My roommate is a self-described “conveyor of fine memes” and has a hobby of collecting, creating, and sharing Internet memes.

The Meme: The meme (attached to this post) is a play on the phrase “easy peasy lemon squeezy.” The phrased is reworked in a text explanation that laments the fact that things are not “easy peasy lemon squeezy” as once believed, but are in fact “difficult difficult lemon difficult.” This explanation is accompanied by the image of a middle-aged woman furiously gripping a laptop in both hands and biting into it.

Analysis: This became a folklore discussion as a surprise, as the further my roommate and I discussed it, the more it seemed to work as a piece of folk speech. “Difficult difficult lemon difficult” is definitely an evolution of the saying “easy peasy lemon squeezy,” which itself has an origin that feels meaningless in the context the phrase has since gained. The specific discovery of the newly-changed saying also has the context of being in meme form, memes being one of the more common areas of unauthored expression in the 21st century.

The Family Car Story

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Portland, OR
Performance Date: 3/13/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese (Mandarin)

Context: I collected this from a friend on a trip over Spring Break, after he’d heard me talking about folklore with another friend I was collecting from.

Background: This is a story my friend’s father like to recount at family gatherings or parties they host.

Dialogue: A large part of my family comes from this one place in Wisconsin called Steven’s Point, um, and, for a while they were… uh, I think, one side of my family was a— uh, was pretty wealthy and lived there for a while, and so, I think, when cars started rolling in across the country, um… So in the 1930s, I think, or, uh, the 1940s, my… great-grandmother, uh, she, moved to Steven’s Point, Wisconsin, uh, and, I think she was, she was starting to get kind of old, and she had to go renew her driver’s license. Now… there were only two cars in Steven’s Point at that time: the one she was driving, and the one she crashed into.

Analysis: The fact that my friend’s father likes to regularly tell this story at gatherings/parties convinced me to mark this in the Customs category, since it’s a familial custom for him to tell it. And while it’s not the most universal story in the world to tell, it feels very important in the legacy of this particular family. So it works as a more personal piece of folklore that way.

Juha and His Sheep

Nationality: Syrian
Age: 52
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 11, 2017
Primary Language: Arabic
Language: English

Juha had a white, cute, chubby sheep, and he used to love him a lot. Juha’s friends wanted to trick him, and to slaughter that sheep for them for dinner. They told him that the end of the world will be tomorrow, and there is no point of keeping his sheep, and that they should their last picnic and enjoy the meat next to the river. So Juha slaughtered the sheep, and he started a fire to grill it. His friends went to swim in the river, and they were laughing and joking about him. He got upset, and he threw all their clothes in the fire. When they came back, they were upset at him, and he told them: “Why do you need their clothes if tomorrow is the end of the world?”

Background information: This is a traditional story heard throughout the Middle East. Juha is like Charlie Chaplin in a sense – he always does funny stuff and gets into funny situations, and is a recurring character.

Context: The informant told me this story in a conversation about folklore.

Thoughts: It’s interesting to see the amount of stories and jokes that revolve around this Juha character. To have one main character seems to make it easier to relay jokes and stories – no background information or context is needed, since it is always Juha. He gets into funny situations all the time, so it makes sense that these things happen to him. I feel bad for the sheep, though – getting it killed for something to laugh about is a cruel joke! Juha definitely and rightfully got back at his friends.