Thread: Анекдоты, шутки, шуточные стишки, истории - смешные или не очень

Урок русского языка в школе.

Учительница:
- Вовочка, назови два местоимения.
Вовочка (испуганно):
- Кто? Я?
У:
- Садись, пять.

Originally Posted by Боб Уайтман

Вовочка, назови два местоимения.
Вовочка (испуганно):
- Кто? Я?

LOL! It's nice to see an example of a Russian joke that translates easily into many other languages (since the word-play in Lampada's Что такое причастие? joke can't be translated at all).

And I'm reminded of a joke about English grammar:

A teacher is explaining to the class that a double negative creates a positive meaning, and gives the example that "I haven't never eaten sushi" actually means "I have eaten sushi before."

"But," adds the teacher, "there are no cases in which a double positive creates a negative meaning."

A voice from the back of the classroom says, "Yeah, right."

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

LOL! It's nice to see an example of a Russian joke that translates easily into many other languages (since the word-play in Lampada's Что такое причастие? joke can't be translated at all).

Okay, on second thought, I just had an inspiration:

A blonde goes into a rabbi's office and asks:

"What's a bris?"

The rabbi gives a long explanation about the rite of bris for newborn Jewish boys, and the Scriptural basis for circumcision. After he's finished explaining, the blonde looks very puzzled and then asks:

"Ummm, okay then, what's hubris?"

----

(Okay, so it's not an EXACT translation... But I couldn't think of any Christian rituals with English names that sound similar to other common words.)

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

A teacher is explaining to the class that a double negative creates a positive meaning, and gives the example that "I haven't never eaten sushi" actually means "I have eaten sushi before."

Is it true that a double negation in English creates a positive meaning? As far as I know, double negation is used sometimes in colloquial English, and it has a negative meaning, not positive (The phrase ‘I haven’t never eaten sushi’ means ‘I have never eaten sushi’ and shouldn’t be understood as ‘I have eaten sushi before’, should it?).

Or the teacher uses an unfair method of proofing the superiority of the literary language over a substandard one, trying to apply mathematical logics to language?

Originally Posted by Soft sign

Is it true that a double negation in English creates a positive meaning? As far as I know, double negation is used sometimes in colloquial English, and it has a negative meaning, not positive (The phrase ‘I haven’t never eaten sushi’ means ‘I have never eaten sushi’ and shouldn’t be understood as ‘I have eaten sushi before’, should it?).

You're absolutely correct that every native speaker of English would understand "I haven’t never eaten sushi" to be exactly synonymous with "I have never eaten sushi" -- no one would be confused by the double-negative and think it means "I have eaten sushi". So, the teacher is applying a rather artificial standard, as though human language were a mathematical formula.

On the other hand, I would say that double negatives belong to the category of English "просторечие" -- it sounds uneducated if one uses double negatives habitually. However, well-educated speakers will quite often use double negatives for rhetorical/artistic/humorous effect. (For example, the song "There Ain't Nothin' Like a Dame" from the 1949 musical South Pacific.)

So, non-native speakers should use double-negative constructions with caution -- otherwise people will think that you don't know the basic rules of English grammar.

P.S. Never use double negatives is one of those Grammar Rules that are taught to younger children in school, along with Never split an infinitive and Never end a sentence with a preposition. (In fact, some of the greatest writers in the English language have broken all of these so-called "rules".)

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

never end a sentence with a preposition

Which is, of course, the basis for the classic joke:

On his first day at a new school, a young boy couldn't find the cafeteria and asked a passing teacher:
"Excuse me, ma'am, can you tell me where the lunchroom is at?"

The teacher responded, "Young man, you know that you're not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition. The word at is a preposition, so it can't be the last word in the sentence. Can you ask me that question again, the right way?"

The boy thinks for a few seconds and then asks:

"Can you tell me where the lunchroom is at, bitch?"

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

P.S. Never use double negatives is one of those Grammar Rules that are taught to younger children in school, along with Never split an infinitive and Never end a sentence with a preposition. (In fact, some of the greatest writers in the English language have broken all of these so-called "rules".)

We were taught to put prepositions at the end in questions and relative clauses. What are you thinking of? Later we found out that the preposition could be on the first place too.
About double negatives we were taught that they were impossible in English.
Из-за двойных отрицаний по-русски становится непонятна история Одиссея и Циклопа. "Кто тебя обидел?" "Никто" Ну, раз тебя никто не обидел,..." Это "не" не было нужно в древнегреческом.
- Чего ты не понимаешь?
- Ничего.

Originally Posted by Marcus

We were taught to put prepositions at the end in questions and relative clauses.

And, indeed, you can!

The idea that one should not put prepositions at the end of a sentence/clause is essentially a "classroom myth" based on the rules of Latin grammar. Generations of English-speaking children have been taught "never end a sentence/clause with a preposition" because it's impossible or ungrammatical to do so in standard Latin. And some of these children grow up to become schoolteachers who pass on this non-existent "rule" to the next generation of kids.

P.S. Needless to say, this "rule" goes back to the days when it was still common for English-speaking pupils to study basic Latin grammar in school! (As far as I know, it was typical for middle-class Victorian boys to learn Latin.)