He is a late bloomer, only in his thirties he starts attending an adults education center to learn English.
His teacher strongly advises him to go to Great Britain to have some conversation with native speakers.
The guy is very nervous when he indeed starts his trip. In a typical British town he enters a typical British pub and sits down on a table next to some typical British women. Nervously he fidgets with his English Phrase Book, collects all his courage and approaches them, asking:
“Excuse me, are you ladies from Scotland”?
The addresses notice that he isn’t confident in English and one answers friendly:
“No, dear. Wales”.
The guy understands his mistake and tries again:
“Are you wales from Scotland”?
Joke Poo: A Programmer Learns Python
A seasoned Java programmer wants to learn Python. He’s a bit behind the curve, only starting in his forties. He enrolls in an intensive Python bootcamp.
His instructor strongly advises him to contribute to an open-source Python project to get some real-world experience.
The guy is very nervous when he starts his first pull request. He finds a mature Python library and opens its source code. He nervously fidgets with his Python style guide, collects all his courage, and makes a small change, adding a comment above a variable declaration:
# Excuse me, is this declared a list or a tuple?
The maintainers notice that he isn’t confident in Python and one of them replies kindly:
# No, dear. Dictionary.
The guy understands his mistake and tries again:
# Are you dictionary from tuple?
Alright, let’s break down this joke and see if we can squeeze some more humor out of it.
Joke Dissection:
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Premise: A German man with limited English attempts to practice his skills in a British pub.
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Key Elements:
- German Stereotype: Implicitly, the joke relies on the stereotype of Germans being diligent but perhaps overly literal and precise.
- Language Barrier: The core of the humor comes from the miscommunication and misunderstandings due to his limited English.
- British Geography: The confusion between “Wales” (a country) and “whales” (sea mammals) is crucial to the punchline.
- Accent/Pronunciation: Also implicit, the German accent may be contributing to the misinterpretation, but it isn’t explicitly stated.
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Punchline: The question “Are you wales from Scotland?” is funny because it combines geographical ignorance with a nonsensical question. It highlights the absurdity of his linguistic stumble.
Comedic Enrichment:
Here’s a new joke playing off the original, leveraging some “whale” facts:
New Joke:
A German marine biologist, also a late English learner, travels to Scotland for a conference on cetacean conservation. During the conference gala, he spots a group of delegates from Wales. Eager to practice his English and sound informed, he approaches them and says, “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I’m very interested in the local fauna. Tell me, are the Welsh whales particularly renowned for their baleen?”
One of the Welsh delegates, a sheep farmer, replies, “Baleen? Never heard of ’em. Ours mainly eat grass and complain about the rain.”
Why this works:
- Builds on the Original: It retains the “German learning English” premise.
- Adds Layered Misunderstanding: It introduces a new element of miscommunication by misinterpreting baleen. Baleen is a filter-feeding system inside the mouths of baleen whales.
- Leaning on Stereotypes: It plays on the “sheep farming” stereotype of Wales
- Whale Fact Integration: The “baleen” reference adds a touch of factual humor.
Amusing “Did You Know” (Related to the Original Joke’s Elements):
“Did you know that the German word for Wales is ‘Wales’ but with the stress put on the ‘e’ instead of the ‘a’? So it sounds more like “Wels” which means catfish in German! So, in theory, the man may have asked whether there are Welsh catfish from Scotland.”