Week 10 and 12Although I am happy with my progress in my knowledge and conformability with jokes and riddles, I don’t think I’ve progressed as extensively when in comparison to my accent. I initially thought this was the easier of the two semester goals but its proving otherwise.My language instructor recommended a few youtube comedy clips that have Farsi voiceovers, where the actual visual is an American movie but the dialogue as been altered to Farsi and unrelated at all to the movie. For example, I watched a 5 minute clip of a dialogue between two generals in the Trojan war but instead of talking about the war the Farsi voiceover had them talking about circuses and flying boats. My language partner recommended such odd variations of clips that had a separation of visual and oral elements because they would help reinforce on relying just on sound to understand the flow of conversation without any aides.I am getting a bit more comfortable with the 15-30 second mullah nasrudin jokes, I definitely haven’t mastered them in all there rudiments but I think I’m a the point where I don’t have to worry about understanding them but just finding the reasons why the punch lines are funny and sometimes with no fault of my own, unknown cultural references hinder me on this.I have tried the >1 minute jokes and although I am struggling with them, I think they by extension will really help master the 15-30 second jokes which really is what I am more concerned with. According to my language partner, no one says a one minute joke at social gatherings in Afghanistan but rather short and quick ones like the 15-30 second variations I have been practicing with. However I still find the >1 minute jokes very interesting because in some ways there not just longer variations of the 15-30 second jokes, they really are more confiscated in their cultural references.Here are some of my favorite >1 minute mullah nasrudin jokes that also make sense in english:One day a friend of Mullah Nasrudin visited him with a chicken as a gift. Nasrudin was very happy to receive such a rare and expensive gift. Consequently he killed the chicken and made a delicious soup from it and enjoyed it with his friend. Several days later, a stranger came asking for Mullah Nasrudin. Upon inquiring, Nasrudin was told that he is a friend of the friend that brought the aforementioned chicken. So Nasrudin invited him to have dinner with him and offered some chicken soup that was still left in the house. A few days later another stranger appeared claiming that he is a friend of the friend of the friend that brought the chicken. Nasrudin, now a bit annoyed nevertheless invited him to supper and offered him a soup. Yet another day, one more friend of the friend... came to see Nasrudin. Without further questions Nasrudin offered him a soup. "This is the worst ever soup I tasted. It tastes almost like water. Is this the way you treat a friend of a friend of a ...?" the angry friend shouted. "Pardon me sir, this is a soup made from the soup, that was made from the soup,..... that was made from the chicken."When Nasrudin was a magistrate, a woman came to him with her son. "This youth," she said, "eats too much sugar; I cannot afford to keep him in it. Therefore I ask you formally to forbid him to eat it, as he will not obey me." Nasrudin told her to come back in seven days. When she returned, he postponed his decision for yet another week. "Now," he said to the youth, "I forbid you eat more than such and such a quantity of sugar every day." The woman subsequently asked him why so time had been necessary before a simple order could be given. "Because, madam, I had to see whether I myself could cut down on the use of sugar, before ordering anyone else to do it."
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