Give me your wordplay and obscure culture references, I love them all.

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[–] 45 points 1 year ago (5 children)

[off topic?]

Yiddish. Does not translate to Christian.

Old man goes to the same lunch counter every day and orders the exact same meal every time. Tuna fish salad on rye toast and tomato soup.

One day he walks in and orders his meal. The waiter brings it.

"Waiter, I want you to try this soup."

"I'm sorry sir, I'll get you a different bowl."

"No, I want you to try this soup!"

"I'll get the manager."

"No, I want you to try this soup!"

This goes on for five minutes and finally the waiter gives up.

"Okay, I'll try the soup. Where's the spoon?"

"Aha!"

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago

    What really translates here for me is how exhausting customers can be.

    If the server forgot to bring a spoon you could have just said that five minutes ago while the soup was still hot.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I didn't know this joke had Yiddish origins. Funnily enough, it was told to me by my Jewish grandmother when she was explaining in a convoluted way that I should sweep before mopping 🤣.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    One time, between classes we got on the topic of ethnic humor. The guy I told the joke to looked at me like I was insane, but the Russian immigrant woman who overheard it laughed. Someone else told me that Southern US folks would get it.

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Spanish:

    --Señor, mi mamá quiere saber qué vende.

    --Dile a tu mamá que ceviche.

    English:

    --Mister, my mom wants to know what are you selling.

    --Tell to your mom that ceviche.

    Ceviche is, well, ceviche. In north west of México, we often say "vichi" to say "nude". "vicharse" would be "get naked", so "Dile a tu mamá que ceviche" can be a pun for "dile a tu mamá que se viche" (Tell to your mom that get naked)

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago* (5 children)

    Que le dijo un pez a otro pez?
    Nada!

    What did one fish say to the other? Nothing(/Swim)!

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I get it. The spanish wordt for swimming is "nadar", which sounds almost the same. Seems like DuoLingo isn't completely useless after all.

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  • [+] 20 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago*

    As a Canadian in Scotland, this is the number one joke I'm told by Scots. Closely followed by the statement "I've a (cousin/sister/brother/uncle/auntie etc) in Canada." I swear, it's probably 1 in 3 Scots with family in Canada.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Spanish wordplay: ¿Por qué está feliz la escoba? Porque siempre barriendo.

    Translation: Why is the broom happy? Because it's always sweeping (barriendo = sweeping, sounds like va riendo = goes around laughing)

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    "Was ist der Unterschied zwischen Schach und Billard?" - "Beim Schach hat man den Kö nich."

    "What's the difference between chess and billiards?" - Answer is a pun, can mean both "In chess, you have the king." and "In chess, you don't have the cue." Doesn't translate at all.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    「野菜を食べやさい!」

    I think a close-enough approximation (which isn’t close at all) would be “eat your veggies, peas.”

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    From Danish: You can make a call from Ringsted to Thisted but you can't pee from Thisted to Ringsted.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    For those curious, Ringsted and Thisted are Danish cities. "Ring", like in English, is the sound a phone makes when you make a call, and in Danish we say that we "ring" someone, when we call them. "This" is pronounced like the Danish word "tis", which means pee.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    Får får inte får. Får får lamm.

    sheeps don't get sheeps. Sheeps get lambs.

    Får = sheep/to get

    var tog vägen vägen? Ute på en åker och åker

    where did the road go? Out in a field and driving

    "Tog vägen" = literally "took the road", meaning "where did it go", sort of. And åker = driving and a farm field.

    I got a t-shirt from the Swedish Society for People with Anxiety. It came with a print on the chest.

    "print on the chest" would be "tryck för/på/över bröstet" having the double meaning "preassure over the chest".

    Then there are endless of jokes from Gothenburg which all do not translate.

    Who is faster, Eminem or Taylor Swift? Eminem, he is a rapper

    "rapper" in swedish is "rappare", meaning also "faster".

    In stockholm a snake escaped the zoo and has not been found. The zoo is missing him a lot

    The last bit in swedish would be "saknaden är enorm", "saknad" being the emotion of missing someone, "enorm" being large/a lot/great. But also enorm=en-orm=a-snake.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Who's the stinkiest Norse god? Gar-loki

    Works better in Dutch, I swear

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    3 students share an apartment and 2 of them study a lot but the third spends most his nights partying. The 2 studious housemates decide to pull a prank on him, and one night when he comes home they are waiting for him next to the bedroom door wearing white sheets. One of the friends says 'welcome friend, I am Peter!'. The other says 'welcome friend, I am Paul'. The drunk house mate looks at them and says 'Colleagues! would you mind stepping aside? I am Lazarus!'

    yeah, that doesn't translate... in Dutch, the names refer to St peter and St Paul and both end in -us as well: Petrus and Paulus. Also, 'being Lazarus' means being very drunk.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    life is like a cucumber, sometime in your hand sometime in your ass. Arabic/Sudanese dialect

    el eisha zey el ajoura, mara fi eedak, mara fi teezahk

    …..

    what am i doing with my life 🙈

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    ¿Que hace el pez?

    Nada.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    What's the most dangerous brick? A crocodile

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago*

    Here's one which only works if you know BOTH Portuguese and English:

    "In Portugal it's very common for old ladies to go to a coffee place and ask for a big cock"

    (Explanation: the Portuguese word for milk with coffee - "galão" - also means "big rooster". Those are the only two meanings it has in that language. However when you translate it to English you can use a certain synonym for "rooster" which can be read as having another, very different, meaning)

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Dutch: Er liep een man in de woestijn en die vond een kameel, maar de kameel vond van niet.

    English: A man was walking in the desert and he found a camel, but the camel found he hadn't.

    I don't know, maybe it works in English too.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    German joke with word play: " 'Nur noch schnell einen runter holen, dann ist Mittag' - Karl Heinz (Flackschütze)"

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    A joke in Spanish: ¿Como se dice "autobus" en alemán? "subanstrujenbajen"

    Explanation: The question asks how to say "bus" in German. The answer is a form of the words "get on, squeeze, get off" made to look/sound like faux German.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Finland and sweden were having a competition about which language is the most beautiful. Finland was let to choose the sentence and "saari, saari, heinäsaari, heinäsaaren neito". In swedish its "Ö, ö, hö ö, hö ö mö"

    (in english its "island, island, grassy island, grassy island's maiden")

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    In Japanese: 春夏冬
    It means spring (haru), summer (natsu), winter (fuyu). What's missing? Autumn. In other words, autumn (aki) is nonexistent (nai), so this is pronounced akinai, which means "not getting tired/bored of something".

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    What's that?

    <Huh?>

    What's that called?

    Denali

    I'm sorry?

    Denali is what that's called.

    Ah. Of course, off you go.

    Marks down Mount Denali. Excellent.

    [Joke from a bit farther up north than us, language is different but the joke's the exact same.]

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Hibbedi bobbedi hopfn, jetzt hoats a mal dei Fotzn.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    I hope this isn't racist as I never thought it was. Best told to an English speaker who only speaks that one language.

    A Chinese man is walking down the street and he notices a Chinese friend of his on the other side of the street, walking the opposite way. He yells across the street to his friend "(do fake Chinese talk)". His friend yells back "(more fake Chinese talk)". He answers him back with more fake Chinese talk while starting to laugh. He then laughs like a loon as if it is the best joke he's ever heard.

    There is no joke to get but only pretending there was one. Stupid and absurd, I know.

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