all 29 comments

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[–] 31 points 20 hours ago (1 child)

I’m not funny in any language ;-;

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  • [–] 24 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

    Kein Problem, Habibi, just be yourself.

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  • [–] 6 points 14 hours ago* (2 children)

    No problem, Brudi, كن نفسك فقط


    I had to look up the Arabic for "just be yourself" and was a bit taken aback.

    The first example use of the phrase "just be yourself" reads:

    Just be yourself and leave a pool of blood on stage.

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  • [–] 10 points 19 hours ago

    I had brain surgery and hand to relearn how to talk and express my self and it was not working at all for years until I started trying to learn Spanish again, and then I realized that was my first language when everything clicked.

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  • [–] 7 points 21 hours ago

    Sometimes I will make jokes to my friends that are untranslatable to english, and giggle to myself about it, while all of them are confused lol.. but I think im also relatively funny in english and my other non-native languages, which is fine enough :3

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  • [–] 6 points 15 hours ago

    I started learning mandarin and found out one of my coworkers names "sounds" like Flower Cat. He did not think it was funny when I started calling him FlowerCat in English

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  • [–] 6 points 17 hours ago

    If you acquired them all in early childhood they're all your first language.

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  • [–] 11 points 18 hours ago (2 children)
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  • [–] 2 points 11 hours ago

    I try with some cross-language puns between German and English sometimes but boy can native Germans be tough nuts to crack.

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  • [–] 3 points 13 hours ago

    I've often wondered about this. I'd like to think I'm really darn good at English as it's my only language.

    If I moved somewhere and had to start over, it would probably take years before I learned a fluent vocabulary. Even then, I'd still be miles away from being able to write good poetry or craft pithy jokes.

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  • [–] 3 points 20 hours ago

    Miss Worldwide

    You should be at home in NYC, and can probably find other people like you

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  • [–] 2 points 15 hours ago (1 child)

    Arabic first, English second, German third. Obviously.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 hours ago

    All three are mother tongues aka first languages.

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  • [–] 1 point 20 hours ago
    [–] 1 point 18 hours ago

    I feel this deeply

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  • [+] 1 point 14 hours ago
    [–] -3 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

    True humor transcends language barriers. If you have difficulty being funny in a different language, it means you're relying too heavily upon puns.

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  • [–] 4 points 14 hours ago

    I don't think so, every language has some concepts or words that translate poorly. Languages are also rooted in culture, so for instance some jokes in the English language are either hilarious or meh or fall flat depending on if you're in the US, the UK or Australia.

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  • [–] 3 points 16 hours ago

    I dunno. Some humor does, but man try watching comedians outside your home country with subtitles. So much of it just bombs. Come diams tap into shared experiences and the nuances of them. So much of that is culturally, geographically, politically relevant.

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