[Multilingual Monday] Multilingual Jokes

[aadroma]

Adapted from the Russian jokes page on WikipediaA new Chinese ambassador is to meet Gromyko. When the latter enters, the Chinese ambassador puts his hand out and introduces itself: "瑞徽 (Ruì Huī)!" Gromyko, unperturbed, retorts "Жуй сам! (Zhui sam)!" The surprised Chinese asks: "Ah, nice to meet you; where can I find Gromyko

Comments

[bearquest]

LOL Terrific

Remember the old mnemonic when first learning Hebrew: "he" is a she, "who" is a he and "dog" is a fish?

[muckefuck]

There's an old joke that plays on the lack of /p/ in Arabic and the fact that most speakers confuse it with /b/: Ben Ali visits the USA. When he returns to Tunisia, he orders that his name be written on every door in the country. When one of his aides asks him why, he explains, "I've just come from the USA, and President Bush has his name on all of the doors there!"

[gorkabear]

There are gazillion jokes in Spanish using that. Mostly, they use things that sound "foreign" to Spanish ears which add up to funny sentences. Speaking of Japanese, I just got a collection of "doctor names" in Spanish

[pne]

I heard a joke about an English speaker visiting Russia and commenting that the populace must be very well-educated - even the graffiti on walls has mathematical formulas on it with xs and ys!