Learning German Humor

Audrey Shankles
Jul 27, 2017 · 2 min read

I’ve been having a hard time finding German humor. There is an abundance of it, somewhere, but is it actually funny?

(According to Leacock the famous Canadian wit: no.)
(See also: his views on those pesky and perverse Russian verbs.)

I’m missing out on a lot of comedy because I don’t understand it, and wanting to understand and laugh with people is a fantastic motivator to keep learning this pesky and perverse beautiful language.

Since recently I’ve been upping my game to cram more German vocab into my Tage my co workers have responded with their own helpful tips. This morning I received two in my email:

“How to speak German. Add hundred words together. Done.”

with this article attached. It should be noted I’m already smooshing words together to speak my preferred form of Denglisch but it’s nice to know this is a formally accepted process.

Maybe?

Or maybe not?

The other piece of advice this morning came in the form of a video clip from the show Loriot which is a revered comic and TV series around here. I’m hoping when I’m more fluent I’ll be able to understand why this show is so funny, but as an outsider I can tell you it seems to be Monty-Python-esque, which I liebe.

I will continue on with my quest to understand and appreciate humor in a foreign tongue, and if anyone has any suggestions, throw em my way bitte!


Originally published at www.audreyisabroad.com on July 27, 2017.

Audrey Shankles

Written by

American who lives in Germany, and writes about how that's going. More @ https://www.audreyisabroad.com/

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