Great corrections of our time
From Hina, the Croatian news agency:
'Please note that the first sentence of the news item headlined 'Residents of Zagreb best joke-tellers in Croatia - survey' should read correctly: 'Residents of Zagreb are the most successful in telling jokes in Croatia', according to a survey [in] the Croatian edition of Reader's Digest recently conducted'.
I can just imagine that Hina was deluged with e-mails from Outraged of Osijek and Disgusted of Daruvar moaning that they told much funnier jokes than Zagrebites, and the Reader's Digest tale had been horribly distorted. Furthermore, perhaps the good people of Split, Pula or wherever are much better than Zagrebites at telling jokes when not in Croatia?
I do wonder how they measured success in joke telling. Remembering the punch line? Not telling jokes reliant upon knowledge of recherché sexual practices when trying to amuse maiden aunts? Volume of laughter? Duration of laughter?
Any Croat jokes (in translation...) would be gratefully received. At one point I was doing a re-write of Lear's 'Old man with a beard' limerick involving sundry Balkan nationalities, but it never got beyond private beta testing because it was not very funny.
'Please note that the first sentence of the news item headlined 'Residents of Zagreb best joke-tellers in Croatia - survey' should read correctly: 'Residents of Zagreb are the most successful in telling jokes in Croatia', according to a survey [in] the Croatian edition of Reader's Digest recently conducted'.
I can just imagine that Hina was deluged with e-mails from Outraged of Osijek and Disgusted of Daruvar moaning that they told much funnier jokes than Zagrebites, and the Reader's Digest tale had been horribly distorted. Furthermore, perhaps the good people of Split, Pula or wherever are much better than Zagrebites at telling jokes when not in Croatia?
I do wonder how they measured success in joke telling. Remembering the punch line? Not telling jokes reliant upon knowledge of recherché sexual practices when trying to amuse maiden aunts? Volume of laughter? Duration of laughter?
Any Croat jokes (in translation...) would be gratefully received. At one point I was doing a re-write of Lear's 'Old man with a beard' limerick involving sundry Balkan nationalities, but it never got beyond private beta testing because it was not very funny.
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on Monday, April 07, 2008 at 9:42 am.
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A few decades ago I was sneeringly told by a Serb that the Croats did not have a word for belt. Instead they used a phrase roughly "the thing that goes round your waist to hold up your trousers." It seems a bit far-fetched - but who knows?
That is quite excellent. Similarly, I had been led to believe the Finns had no word for car radiator, but I asked a tame Finn and found that they did.
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