Talk:German humour

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[edit] Old talk

Sorry, this article by The Guardian is either biased crap or a funny joke or wishful thinking. The Germans have no sense of humour at all and because of this there is no problem with the contemporary British view of "German humor". If you look at British_humour#Themes you knew exactly what Germans don't laught about. There is no word for comedy in the modern German language, the German language Wikipedia explains:

"Unter Comedy (Anglizismus) versteht man im deutschsprachigen Raum unterhaltsame, größtenteils unpolitische Kleinkunstprogramme und bestimmte Arten von Unterhaltungssendungen im Fernsehen und Radio."

Literaly translated:

On German language soil the term comedy (an anglicism) is understood as entertaining, to a large extent unpolitical small art programs and special kinds of entertaining broadcasts in television and radio.

German is the language of multiple meaning! Don't believe Stewart Lee, ask a general linguist. There is only little problem to use the words "endlösung" (final solution) or "bis zur vergasung" (until gasing) in an every day German language conversation without referring to the Holocaust, some dozens average words contain "führer". Many words get their meaning only from context (e.g. sky/heaven, geist).

Some months ago a young German comedian asked a candidate in a TV-show to color her hair orange. She did and then he told her: "You look pretty old for your age" (Du siehst ganz schön alt aus für dein Alter). In German there is - on the first view - only one word for "old" and "age" and "age" looks a little bit like "more old". The comdeian apologised after the show and offered to pay 1.0000 Euro but was sued by this woman to pay 25,000 Euro and finaly had to pay 6.000 Euro because of this "insult". The judge told the press, the sentence above would have been a "heavy personality injury" ("schwere Persönlichkeitsverletzung") - this is (even in the difficult German language with all those crazy compound words) rank nonsense - but no one all over Germany noticed, complained or laughed.

Hmmm a good number of Germans DO laugh very heartily at some variants of British humour - Monty Python is cult, and some Winston Churchill bon-mots are often quoted. It seems, however, judging from your assessment, that the British are quite unable to laugh at our jokes - now who is really lacking humour here?  :D
What are you trying to tell us to quote from the German "Comedy"? This word in German simply has not the same meaning as it has in the English language where we borrowed it from. English comedy can be quite correctly translated as Komödie, meaning both the drama form and more general funny plots. The German Comedy however means more specifically the plotless stage show performed by comedians, and has been "imported" as a modern, televisable art form from the USA, not from Britain.
I agree that the German language does lend itself to various forms of puns and word play. I am no linguist to assess whether this is more or less so than in English.
Ah and that old infatuation with nazi terminology that today is so massively more popular in England than in Germany! There's a nice joke even, exploiting the "führer"-thing: Der Führer war ein armes Schwein | er hatte keinen Führerschein (the Führer was a poor pig, he didn't have a driver's license). :-D
Now to Oliver Pocher and his insults... I don't know if you are a native German speaker. If not, then let me explain: In some German "tribes" (I might mention the people of Köln or Berlin), funny insults have an old and esteemed tradition - you insult someone in a slightly bizarre way, he or she insults you back, and both are happy fellows. The trick is to overdo the insult, or say something that is obviously unwarranted (and both know that you), or exaggerate the rhethoric. Some TV comedians do this all the time, with general success; they are sometimes even likened to some British "black" humourists. Oliver Pocher, however, is one personality, who sometimes forgets the bizarre and funny in his insults. He seems to think that an insult as such is funny, provided his victim doesn't stand a real chance to react in kind. That particular incident you are telling - well, yes, possibly there could have been a pun intended, but very likely it wasn't (Pocher is not known for subtlety). The sentence Sie sehen alt aus für ihr Alter simply is one that everybody has used before, meaning something quite specific: There's a difference between apparent and objective age. This difference is so utterly obvious to any native speaker, that the sentence can not, in a linguistic sense, be said to contain a pun - unless you actively prompt your audience to reflect upon a simplistic interpretation of the individual words. This, Pocher failed to do. Pocher is a bad comedian, you can't tell from the way he speaks when he intends to mean something funny while saying something perfectly bland and normal. If it was meant as a joke, it was a dull joke badly told. See, I could call you an asshole on British TV and think to myself "ooh just picture a donkey with a big hole in it - isn't that funny?", and then wonder why you are not laughing. But hmmm maybe I should have dropped a hint somewhere that I may have meant for you to reflect on the (rather trivial and dull) fact that ass origially means donkey and not arse, even though today it more often means just that. --EMaraite 21:52, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Turkish-German humor

Not mentioned are jokes about the Turkish-German relationship. One goes like: Little Ali (or any satisfyingly stereotypical Turkish male name) scores best in his German class test. The teacher tells him that from now on, he is a German. Little Ali goes home and proudly tells his father, who beats him up consequently. So Ali goes out crying, where he runs into a friend. "What's up, Ali?" (using made-up Turkish accent is vital! - "Was'los, Alder?") "You see, I've been German for two hours now, and already have trouble with Turkish people." This joke is really not only on Turkish people, but on the relationship between nationals, and is commonly told by Germans AND by Turkish people.

There is also an act that constructs a double-bind situation with a Turkish stud threatening violence to a (German) man who accidentally looked at his girl-friend, instrumenting stereotypes of Turkish/Arab culture. "Did you just look at my girl-friend?!" - "No, I didn't." - "Do you think she's ugly?!" - "No, no. She's beautiful." - "So you did look at her?!" - "Well, yes, I did, but I'm not at all interested in her!" - "Are you gay?..."

84.44.170.194 18:02, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] humor about Holocaust / Third Reich

Such jokes may be mistaken for being antisemitic, so I going to introduce this. I do not have a proper source for it, but take my word as a German: There are Germans with intelligent humor, but they are not at all into politics. Any German person ever being involved in any kind of political attitude has no humor at all. This concerns, of course, the right wing, but also the left wing, and in fact the entire political spectrum. Therefore, joking about the Holocaust in a seemingly antisemitic way really is not. Period. Having said this, there are two modest examples I can think of.

Many German boys like to joke about the very things there parents are being so over-politically correct about. So they tell each other very stupid jokes like "How man Jews participated in the 1936 Olympic games?" (you can imagine where it goes from here) until one of them suddenly says aloud: "I really cannot laugh about cruel jokes like that! My grandfather died in a concentration camp!" - and when everybody is turning to him (best case: it happens to be in a classroom, with totally unwitting girls around), he says, in a sobbing voice: "It's true. He was... drunk... and fell from watch tower."

The other example I acutally heard from Jewish people, but it's more a joke on the total and rigid political correctness that German society is abusing to keep from real insight. It goes like "What is the highpoint of antifashism?" answer: "That's when Jews are made out of soap!"

87.78.158.52 18:21, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] German-Russian humor of North Dakota

I occasionally stumbled upon this text:

IMO info from it deserves incorporation into the w-article (I already added this ref). `'Míkka 04:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is this article relevant

A lot of it seems like typical British stereotyping. My own anecdotal experience is different. Any ground in truth and/or a reputable source? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.129.190.166 (talk) 22:00, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

I've just added some more depth to the negative perception of German humour, including by adding a culture section and slightly expanding on the language section. I've added a couple of references but there needs to be more analysis of German humour, including examples of modern comedians and their comedic style. I might get round to that if I have time! MathiasFox (talk) 21:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Personally I'm surprised there's an article at all.--129.215.51.5 (talk) 21:02, 4 May 2008 (UTC)