Week 6

[Sayed]

Week 6I reviewed some more children jokes and riddles early on and I feel very comfortable understanding them and relaying them back to my language instructor. Therefore I wanted to start working on the mullah nasrudin jokes and the 30-60 seconds jokes.My language instructor basically told me that if I can get real comfortable with these jokes by the end of the semester, that’s the most realistic goal I can aspire to because the more advanced jokes really don’t make much since at all in English whereas the mullah nasrudin jokes do actually make sense and are funny somewhat in English as well.Mullah Nasrudin jokes are more than 700 years old and are still considered the backbone of Persian comedy. He is the pioneer and model for most comedians in the middle east including the Arabic and Turkish speaking parts of the world.Muska gave me some BBC links that had the so called “modern adoptions of the mullah” but the jokes were weaved into stories that were too complicated for me so therefore we settled on just working on the jokes without any type of additional background. We also decided to just work on his most simple jokes, ie, “why the mullah is dumb”.The main jokes that I am having problems finding the comedic element to:The mullah said this to a man sitting beside him in a tavern, “only one drink makes me drunk” the other man replied “really, only one?” the mullah replied “yes and its usually the sixth”This sounds equally confusing in both Farsi and English for me, and although I can see the punch line as being funny if its supposed to be a drunk remark by the mullah, my language instructor told me it’s the only reason.Jokes that I understand:Mullah Nasrudin’s friend said to him one day "my wife is very touch the least little thing can set her off." The mullah replied "you are lucky, mine is a self-starter”The punch line here makes sense in both English and Farsi, but in farsi the punch line doesn’t have as many interpretations when the mullah says “Self-starter”