My husband is actually pretty good with puns... he had to catch on pretty quick though as punning around is something of a sport in my family.


On the other hand, I look at that gaggle of geese and immediately wonder where the photo was taken, I used to love seeing "Canadian Geese" summering around the north-of-Chicago 'burbs where I used to live.

I don't know about all of you guys. But the ones I asked were totally oblivious to the fact that what Welles said was complete bullshit, historically (chronologically) speaking (plus the cuckoo watch and using renaissance instead of rinascimento).

Clever man that he was, I am quite sure that he knew and added this ironic twist on purpose.

German cabaret is full of word plays, it's just funnier in one own's language. Nothing against the English, really.
And French is full of homophones. We had to learn lists of them in primary school. What a pain. I've heard japanese, Chinese and polynesian languages have far more.
Do you laugh at Raymond Devos humour in French ? Do you know Lilo Wanders in German ? To me, it's a delight even though they are very very different. But I don't say that those who don't get it have no humour... mother tongue is the key here, and there are few that get that same level of deep understanding and feeling for the language as foreigh language. I have laught at Norwegian stand up, Absolutely Fabulous in English or Dutch friends's humour, but it's different.

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Es wird nichts ausgelassen, um mich hier herauszuekeln. Ein Lehrbuch. False accusations and attacks continue. There is no stopping righteous people when they are wrong.

I scream, you scream, we scream for ice-cream

Reminds me of an American I knew who lived in London and was watching some Monty Python thing with a large group of friends. He said they kept laughing at what was, to him, the oddest times and he couldn't figure out what they were laughing about.

and all you could think of was "honking"?

what about "gander" for pity's sake? has far more possibilities, none of which i can think of right now

I can definitely see how some people (and especially non-native English speakers) wouldn't 'get' the OP's pun.

But I will still agree that I've found the Swiss to not have much of a sense of humor. It's quite creepy...

Make (Swiss) German jokes, they will then.
Language and mother tongue is the key here. Do not expect the whole world to have the same humour as you have. There so much humour you don't get either by the only fact of your monolingualism. Nothing wrong with it but it's the same with other people.
Nothing personnal, really, don't worry, I've been trying to get this message across for ages but nobody believes me.

You know, the French film Ridicule, a comedy, was presented as drama in its German and English version! That's the best humour ever for me. Not to non-French speakers. I accept that. Do so to with English.

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Es wird nichts ausgelassen, um mich hier herauszuekeln. Ein Lehrbuch. False accusations and attacks continue. There is no stopping righteous people when they are wrong.

What divides the U.K. and the USA of course is the common language

I don't think you have to just be in an office in Switzerland for some one that doesn't get what are word's mean to not get the joke, I think that would apply to anywhere.

One thing I have learned, and this is for sure, if you have to explain a joke, no matter how much it made you laugh, it's not going to make other people laugh.

Myabe if you made some word play on the color of the geese as opposed to the white lines on the road you may get some where; around here.

Do you understand Swiss-German humour ?

I understand Village Idiot's frustration. We all think we are geniuses and when we come up with a brilliant idea, joke or pun we want to be recognized for this stroke of genius. But facing the glassy expression of your work colleagues can only bring you to this conclusion: i am genius and no one understands me.

I love Swiss humour: it's very, very dry, and often impossible to differentiate from plain rudeness.

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if half the examples of 'Swiss rudeness' on this forum aren't just Anglo-Saxon misunderstandings of that dry, mordant wit.

Yes, but why were they being sick??

More important (see above), do you understand Swiss-German in all its facets and subtleties? That's the point. Being funny in a foreign language is very, very difficult, and for many native Swiss-German speakers even Standard German is like a foreign language.

Yeah - all those years we thought puns were the lowest form of wit? Turns out it's queue-jumping.

Nah .... it's more in your face and obvious - the most successful British exports, here, being Benny Hill and Mr. Bean (minimal language problems).

The great french writer Victor Hugo did not like puns and said that they are the farts of the mind.

No, that's just the universal stuff, that doesn't rely on any kind of subtlety. One could argue that British wit isn't subtle based on the fact that these dreadful programmes were made by Brits.

The humour you hear in the Weinstube, on the bus and down the post office, on the other hand, that's a horse of a very different colour.

It's just a bugger for the learner to figure out. I should imagine it's the same for foreigners who wash up in North Yorkshire or Cumbria, though.

Personally - I've yet to encounter such humorous subtlety, in all but the very occasional native ....... although the younger generation do seem to appreciate satirical humour - now it's more common and mainstream ... and accepted.