The world's funniest joke (now available in Chinese :-)

I saw an article on the CNN website, where they announce: "The world's funniest joke has been revealed after a year-long search by scientists."

It's actually a joke I'd heard before, and it goes like this:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy takes out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps: "My friend is dead! What can I do?"  The operator says: "Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead."  There is a silence, then a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: "OK, now what?"



I memorised a joke in Mandarin about 2-3 years ago, and I've got great mileage from it since then - so I decided to translate this one, and will set about memorising it over the next few days. Because of the subtle wording required to make this joke work, I did this yesterday as an exercise with Judy, my Chinese teacher.


In case you'd also like to learn the joke, here it is joke in Chinese. (For an easy pinyin pronunciation of any of the words, here's a shortcut to MDBG.net's version.)

两个猎人在林子里打猎，其中一个突然昏倒了。看起来他没有呼吸，他的眼睛干瞪着。他的同伴打电话叫救护车。他说，“我的朋友死了，怎么办？” 接线生说，“冷静一点，我来帮你。首先确定他真的死了。”  安静了一下，那边穿来了一下枪声。同伴说，“好了，然后呢？”

Get a free collection of Mandarin jokes now (beginner to advanced):

So what was the first joke you memorised? You're welcome to copy it into a comment below, or at least provide a link if you have one.

A laughable blog post

It's Friday, and I like Fridays. Not as much as Saturdays or Sundays, but it's heading in the right direction.

So using the concept of WordPacks, here are some common (and useful!) words which are all tied around a "laughable" theme ...

• hǎo xiào (好笑) funny (adjective)
• xiào huà (笑话) joke (noun)
• wán (玩) play, have fun (verb)
• kāi wán xiào (开玩笑) to make fun of / to joke (verb)
• wēi xiào (微笑) smile (verb)
• kě xiào (可笑) funny (adjective)
• gé gé xiào (格格笑) giggle (verb)

And to make it easier to memorise, note there are many words which end (or begin) with xiào (笑). Also there is a short "run-on" (hǎo xiào / xiào huà) which - if as a beginner that's all you memorise - then that's 90% of the usefulness for 10% of the effort.

PS. If you know any short Chinese jokes, or links to any jokes in Chinese, please leave a comment to this post ...