Tag Archives: Joke

Animal Nicknaming and Jokes

Nationality: Chilean
Age: 60
Occupation: Agronomist/Coffee Plantation Manager
Residence: Hawaii
Performance Date: 03/29/15
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

I collected this piece of folklore from my dad while he was visiting. We ended up just sitting in the car in a parking lot while he shared some more Chilean folklore with me.

In Chile, people often give each other animal names as nicknames. The animal is supposed to somehow resemble or represent the person, so that they can be identifiable by that name. For example, the tallest kid in the class may be called the giraffe, and the annoying one could be call the mosquito. My dad’s nickname back in grade school was “el mono” or “the monkey,” because he was always seen climbing a tree of some sort.

Jokes can also be made using these animal nicknames and creating a pun with the sound that the animal makes.

Ex) -¿Por qué se llamas el gato? (Why do they call you the cat?)

–Mee-oowbuela me dice [Mi abuela me dice.] (My grandma calls me that.)

Many years ago in Chile, people used to live in the country side more than in the city, so there are many jokes about roosters, and chickens, and ducks, etc.

To foreigners or outsiders, this type of joking might not always make sense, especially if the definition of joking might be completely different. What was particularly difficult for me to get, was the pun-making using animal sounds. Not only do the puns have to match words in spanish, but the onomatopoeia sounds that animals make vary from country to country.

“Ikau” Pun

Nationality: American/Filipino
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: 04/27/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Tagalog

The informant is a fellow student and a good friend. While going out for smoothies, she shared her Filipino culture with me.

“I’m going to give you a heads up, so ‘ikau’ mean ‘you.’ So they would say, ‘What’s an example of an ugly cow?’ And then someone would say, ‘what?’ And then they would be like, ‘IKAU!’

Background & Analysis

The informant thinks this joke is really corny, but she still uses it with other Filipino people a lot. She learned it from Filipino friends in grade school, who had probably heard it from older brothers and sisters.

This is a more contemporary joke, because it’s in english, but makes use of a pun in tagalog. This joke most likely then originated among subsequent Filipino-American generation children here in the U.S.

Temel and His Corn Flour

Nationality: Turkish
Age: 27
Occupation: Mathematics Graduate Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/29/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Turkish

About the Informant(s): Informant A and his wife (Informant B) are both from Turkey. They met in college, got married, and then came to the US for graduate school. They are both currently teaching assistants for math.

The Interview:

Informant A: There are like Temel jokes.

Informant B: Oh yeah, yeah.

Informant A: There’s this thing  in Turkey, where people are really smart, but they can be..uh..their minds can be..move around a little bit from time to time. They can be…

Me: Wandering?

Informant A: Yeah, wandering. They are not so careful. They say the silliest things.

Informant B: The jokes start with ‘one day.’ The name of the guy is Temel. One day…haha!

[indistinct chatter, laughter, and awkward silence]

Informant A: I mean, I think [of] one. And then I think of something better.

Me: Are there a lot of jokes like this? With…

Informant A: Yeah yeah. There are like maybe thousands of them. Eighty-percent of them are not so funny.

[more laughter and silence]

Informant A: Okay. I have a dirty one. Not so much.

Me: A what?

Informant A: Nah, it’s not so dirty. Uh. In a region of Turkey, they use corn flour, when they want to cook, special fish and stuff. So one day, Temel, and, when he was going to, I mean, he fell into a deserted island. And he lives there for like five months or something. And then one day, a beautiful girl also washed up on a shore. I mean, she also got lost at sea or something, and then she fell into the island. And she was like: ‘Oh! Here’s something that you have missed so far, I mean you have missed for so long. Several months or whatever. And he (Temel) said: ‘Oh! Did you bring corn wheat? Corn flour?’ It’s because, they love the flour so much that he forgot that there’s a …

Me: He forgot that there’s a what?

Informant A: So she, okay, she says, I mean, ‘you will get something here…[that you have] missed so, for so long. Cause, I know…. Whatever.’ But then he says: ‘Oh, did you bring the corn flour?’

Me: OOH, she’s saying that he wanted to…

Informant A: Exactly.

[laughter]

Me: Okay. So is Temel like a really smart person, but he doesn’t get certain subtexts?

Informant A: Yeah. Exactly.

[laughter]

Informant A: I think these were funnier when we were in high school.

[laughter]

Me: Why do you guys think these jokes are funny? Especially to people in Turkey?

Informant A: I mean, we kind of see people like him all around. That’s one reason.

Me: Would you say that either of you are like Temel?

Informant A: Sometimes? Occasionally.

[laughter]

Background Information/Context: I asked this couple about jokes in Turkey, and both had a hard time coming up with one. After Informant A suggested Temel jokes, they were very excited. But since there are “thousands” of Temel jokes, they had an even harder time coming up with a Temel joke. Informant A finally thinks of a “dirty” Temel joke and tells it to me. It is unknown where he learned it from, probably from childhood or in high school. It seems that Temel jokes are incredibly popular in Turkey. There is a set format–they always start with “one day” and the main character in the joke is always Temel, a guy who is smart but doesn’t understand the implications of what people say. He takes things literally and his funny responses and actions are what make these jokes funny. You never know how Temel might respond to a situation. Apparently, people in Turkey sometimes act like Temel, so Temel jokes are a way for them to make fun of their friends or themselves. This joke specifically is funny because it is assumed that any guy would be hoping for sex having been stranded on an island for months. But Temel isn’t any guy. He didn’t understand what the woman was suggesting and thought of his favorite thing from home — corn flour. Temel’s lack of awareness is what made this joke funny.

My thoughts: Since Informant A was translating the joke from Turkish to English in his head, the delivery of the joke was slower, so I didn’t understand the joke until he explained it to me. But once I understood, I thought it was hilarious as well. I think everyone can relate to this joke because everyone has taken things literally at one point. Even though there is a set format to these jokes, there is a lot of freedom, so it is hard to know what to expect, making the jokes funny while not too repetitive too fast. These jokes are a way for people to make fun of people like Temel as well as a warning for people to not take things so literally.

 

 

 

 

“I’m Staying Another Week” – How Punchlines Pervade Daily Life

Nationality: American
Age: 54
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Chicago, IL
Performance Date: 04/05/15
Primary Language: English
Language: none

The informant is a 54 year old woman, who has lived in the United States all her life. She was raised by her mother and has no siblings. She attended school through college, and lives in downtown Chicago with her husband. The following is what she described as “folkspeech” from her mother-in-law.

 

Informant: “It’s from a joke. So, whenever, if we were having a disagreement, like your uncle and I, about anything, and you’d ask your Grandma’s opinion about it. Like, “What do you think?” She’d say, “The soup’s not hot, the soup’s not cold, and I’m staying another week.” It was a punchline to a joke about a married couple whose mother-in-law is there visiting and won’t leave so they stage a fight to try and make her leave. She realizes what they’re doing so she says, “the soup’s not hot, the soup’s not cold, and I’m staying another week.” So whenever I would try to get her involved, that’s what she would do. She said that all the time.

 

Interviewer: “Do you know where she heard the joke?”

 

Informant: “Oh, from Grandpa, I’m sure. He had so many jokes, you remember.

 

Interviewer: “Of course. Do you know where he got his jokes?”

 

Informant: “He would hear them and I guess kind of mentally collect them to tell.

 

Thoughts: Initially I was unsure as to whether or not this was folklore. The phrase itself doesn’t seem very “folkloric” in nature; neither does the informant’s in-law’s use of the phrase. However, when I thought about the phrase again, I realized that it is a form of folklore. The phrase itself came from the punch line of a joke—something that people learn from other people—and the informant’s mother-in-law took the punch line into a different context, her daily life. This is a perfect example of how folklore can traverse across different mediums and how it can be applied in different ways.

 

Why did they name Canada, Canada?

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/28/15
Primary Language: English

My informant is a USC student of Armenian and Caucasian origin, born and raised in California and regularly exercises through distance running. She is also a human biology major with an emphasis in human performance.

 

“One of my Canadian friends who plays sand volleyball here told me this great joke, and its about how Canada got its name. And so basically people were pulling letters out of a hat and so whe they pulled the first letter they said “C—eh!”, second letter “N—eh!” third letter “D—eh!” spells CANADA!”

 

Analysis: This joke is one that the informant learned from someone else, who acquired the joke from people in her own country and culture. The spread of the joke to an American population shows how humor can be used to bridge cultural gaps. Even though the friend she heard the joke from was Canadian, the use of wordplay and the playing off of Canadian stereotypes (saying eh!) was humorous to both the teller of the joke as well as the listener, and provided a foundation for further conversation and friendship later on.