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Romania Portal |
Romanian humour, like all of Romanian culture, has many affinities with five other groups: the Latins (namely the French and Italians), the Balkan people (Greeks, the Slavs, and Turks), the Germanic peoples and the Hungarians.
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The earliest Romanian character found in an anecdote is Păcală. His name is derived from a (se) păcăli ('to fool oneself/somebody') and, since this word cannot be found in any other related language, we can safely assume that he's part of pure Romanian humour.
The Ottoman influence brought the Balkan spirit and with it other characters and situations. Anton Pann's Nastratin Hogea is a classic example of an urban tradesman. As Jewish people settled in the Romanian regions, two other characters joined Romanian humour: Iţic and Ştrul, a pair of cunning Jews, mainly seen as ingenious but avaricious shopkeepers.
With modernization and urbanization, especially during the Communist regime, Romanians needed a new character, different from the traditional Păcală, and he was found in Bulă, the tragicomic absolute idiot. In 2006 Bulă was voted the 59th greatest Romanian.
With the fall of communism and facing capitalism, a new kind of joke became popular: that of Alinuţa, a sadistic and stupid 10-year old girl. Example: Alinuţa: "Mum, I don't like grandma." Mum: "Shut up, we eat what we have!"
Roma:
Scotsmen are presented as stingy, mean, dumb and feisty kilt-wearing skulks, who act against common sense just to save a small amount of money.
Russians:
Somalis are seen as underweight and hungry.
Albanians are seen as very technologically impaired.
Hungarians are seen as proud, but naive. The stereotypical Hungarian is called Ianoş and usually is accompanied by a Romanian named Ion.
One feature of Romanian humour is that apart from the ethnic jokes, there are also jokes about people of other regions. They are usually told using the way each region uses the Romanian language. For example, Moldovans pronounce /tch/ as /sh/ and /e/ as /i/, Oltenians make use of the perfect simple (rarely used in other regions) and the Transylvanians use some words of Hungarian and German origin such as 'musai' (meaning must) or 'fain' (meaning nice), as well as starting most sentences with the interjection "No" (not a negative, but meaning So or Well).
Policemen: Most Romanian people are not fond of the institution of law enforcement and try to avoid contact with constables. Romanian public opinion holds the policemen as primitive, uneducated and totally corrupt. Some of these police jokes belong to the absurd genre.
Especially during the Communist regime, political jokes were very popular, although they were illegal and dangerous to tell.[1] In the democratic Romania, these jokes are still popular, although the themes changed: now the politicians are seen either as hopelessly corrupt, greedy or as nationalist madmen.
As Ben Lewis put it in his essay,[2] "Communism was a humor-producing machine. Its economic theories and system of repression created inherently funny situations. There were jokes under fascism and the Nazis too, but those systems did not create an absurd, laugh-a-minute reality like communism."
Radio Erevan: just like in the most countries of the former Eastern bloc, Radio Erevan jokes were popular during the Communist times.