This Facebook post by Lev Oborin made me laugh so much I had to preserve it for posterity:
— Петя, к нам сегодня придет учительница, и нам надо…
— Купить водку, — вдруг заканчивает Петя.Петя имел в виду, что на прошлой неделе Яша изрисовал фломастером клавиши пианино и я предположил, что их можно оттереть водкой, но диалог выглядел как типичный пример из учебника русского языка для иностранцев.
Translation:
“Petya, your teacher’s coming today, and we need to…”
“Buy vodka,” Petya interrupts.Petya was remembering that last week Yasha drew all over the the piano keys with marker and I thought they could be cleaned with vodka, but the dialogue was like a typical example from a Russian language textbook for foreigners.
Alexander Snegirev imagines this dialogue in the comments:
а что это с нашим папой?
– а это он опять клавиши протирает…“What’s daddy doing?” “He’s cleaning the piano keys again…”
Addendum: Anatoly quotes another excellent Facebook joke:
Главный редактор – журналисту:
— Пишите срочно статью.
— На каком языке?
— Иврите.
— Да это я понял, на каком языке писать-то?Editor-in-chief to reporter:
“I need you to write a piece right away.”
“In what language?”
“Hebrew.” [Ivrite; sounds exactly like I vrite ‘And tell lies.’]
“Sure, I get that, but what language should I write it in?”
No sooner do I quit Facebook because it’s a waste of internet than you start preserving it for posterity.
{thinking} get a 3D printer and start printing Facebook posts on clay tablets to preserve them for posterity.
No sooner do I quit Facebook because it’s a waste of internet than you start preserving it for posterity.
I suffer so you don’t have to. (I’ve thought of quitting, but I see the occasional interesting post frequently enough that I haven’t actually gone through with it. But I only spend a few minutes a day there.)
Yeah, yeah, a few minutes. That’s what they all say. Very good jokes, though.
But if the Russian for Hebrew sounds exactly like ‘And tell lies,’ isn’t that a bit, you know, anti-semiotic? Or is it just too obviously coincidence for anyone to object?
It’s specifically “Hebrew” in the prepositional case (-e), not the nominative.
But if the Russian for Hebrew sounds exactly like ‘And tell lies,’ isn’t that a bit, you know, anti-semiotic?
My friend once remarked that in the spirit of ethnic comity we should rename ozhidanie as ojevreivanie (Glossary: zhid = Jew is a slur, yevrey = Hebrew is a neutral term for the same, ozhidanie means expectation and ojevreivanie is a nonce word which should mean something like “making something (or somebody) Jewish).
Over a decade ago there was a rash of anti-Japanese jokes in China that played on the fact that the 日 rì ‘sun’ in 日本 rìběn ‘sun-source = Japan’ had the slang meaning of ‘fuck’.
I’ve preserved them for posterity at Humorous Anti-Japanese Puns.
(I might have mentioned this before.)
Damn funny!
Saw the article on Mongolia vs Inner Mongolia vocabulary differences on your blog.
Mongolians are well aware of these differences and love to make fun of them. Most popular joke goes like this:
“How do you call birthday cake* in Inner Mongolian?”
“Nasanbayaryn boov” (literally Age Feast Cookie)
Kind of plausible and even makes some sense, but what makes it funny is that Nasanbayar is a popular male name in Mongolia and “boov” (cookies, cake) is a slang word for penis.
*tursun odriin tort – literally “birth day cake”, tort is borrowed from Russian (ultimately from Italian “torta”)
Ultimately from Latin tortus, a reptile protected by a shell. No, wait. Ultimately from L. tortus, twisted, from which you get all the meanings of tort and tart in English (also torture).
Off topic — here’s the paper on that old Persian/Babylonian/Elamite inscription from a couple weeks ago.
http://www.achemenet.com/pdf/arta/ARTA_2019.001_Delshad_Doroodi.pdf