Talk:German humour/Archive 1

Old talk
Sorry, this article by The Guardian is either biased crap or a funny joke or wishful thinking. The Germans have no sense of humour at all and because of this there is no problem with the contemporary British view of "German humor". If you look at British_humour you knew exactly what Germans don't laught about. There is no word for comedy in the modern German language, the German language Wikipedia explains:

"Unter Comedy (Anglizismus) versteht man im deutschsprachigen Raum unterhaltsame, größtenteils unpolitische Kleinkunstprogramme und bestimmte Arten von Unterhaltungssendungen im Fernsehen und Radio."

Literaly translated:

On German language soil the term comedy (an anglicism) is understood as entertaining, to a large extent unpolitical small art programs and special kinds of entertaining broadcasts in television and radio.

German is the language of multiple meaning! Don't believe Stewart Lee, ask a general linguist. There is only little problem to use the words "endlösung" (final solution) or "bis zur vergasung" (until gasing) in an every day German language conversation without referring to the Holocaust, some dozens average words contain "führer". Many words get their meaning only from context (e.g. sky/heaven, geist).

Some months ago a young German comedian asked a candidate in a TV-show to color her hair orange. She did and then he told her: "You look pretty old for your age" (Du siehst ganz schön alt aus für dein Alter). In German there is - on the first view - only one word for "old" and "age" and "age" looks a little bit like "more old". The comdeian apologised after the show and offered to pay 1.0000 Euro but was sued by this woman to pay 25,000 Euro and finaly had to pay 6.000 Euro because of this "insult". The judge told the press, the sentence above would have been a "heavy personality injury" ("schwere Persönlichkeitsverletzung") - this is (even in the difficult German language with all those crazy compound words) rank nonsense - but no one all over Germany noticed, complained or laughed.


 * Hmmm a good number of Germans DO laugh very heartily at some variants of British humour - Monty Python is cult, and some Winston Churchill bon-mots are often quoted. It seems, however, judging from your assessment, that the British are quite unable to laugh at our jokes - now who is really lacking humour here? :D


 * What are you trying to tell us to quote from the German "Comedy"? This word in German simply has not the same meaning as it has in the English language where we borrowed it from. English comedy can be quite correctly translated as Komödie, meaning both the drama form and more general funny plots. The German Comedy however means more specifically the plotless stage show performed by comedians, and has been "imported" as a modern, televisable art form from the USA, not from Britain.


 * I agree that the German language does lend itself to various forms of puns and word play. I am no linguist to assess whether this is more or less so than in English.


 * Ah and that old infatuation with nazi terminology that today is so massively more popular in England than in Germany! There's a nice joke even, exploiting the "führer"-thing: Der Führer war ein armes Schwein | er hatte keinen Führerschein (the Führer was a poor pig, he didn't have a driver's license). :-D


 * Now to Oliver Pocher and his insults...  I don't know if you are a native German speaker. If not, then let me explain: In some German "tribes" (I might mention the people of Köln or Berlin), funny insults have an old and esteemed tradition - you insult someone in a slightly bizarre way, he  or she insults you back, and both are happy fellows. The trick is to overdo the insult, or say something that is obviously unwarranted (and both know that you), or exaggerate the rhethoric. Some TV comedians do this all the time, with general success; they are sometimes even likened to some British "black" humourists. Oliver Pocher, however, is one personality, who sometimes forgets the bizarre and funny in his insults. He seems to think that an insult as such is funny, provided his victim doesn't stand a real chance to react in kind. That particular incident you are telling - well, yes, possibly there could have been a pun intended, but very likely it wasn't (Pocher is not known for subtlety). The sentence Sie sehen alt aus für ihr Alter simply is one that everybody has used before, meaning something quite specific: There's a difference between apparent and objective age. This difference is so utterly obvious to any native speaker, that the sentence can not, in a linguistic sense, be said to contain a pun - unless you actively prompt  your audience to reflect upon a simplistic interpretation of the individual words. This, Pocher failed to do. Pocher is a bad comedian, you can't tell from the way he speaks when he intends to mean something funny while saying something perfectly bland and normal. If it was meant as a joke, it was a dull joke badly told. See, I could call you an asshole on British TV and think to myself "ooh just picture a donkey with a big hole in it - isn't that funny?", and then wonder why you are not laughing. But hmmm maybe I should have dropped a hint somewhere that I may have meant for you to reflect on the (rather trivial and dull) fact that ass origially means donkey and not arse, even though today it more often means just that. --EMaraite 21:52, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Turkish-German humor
Not mentioned are jokes about the Turkish-German relationship. One goes like: Little Ali (or any satisfyingly stereotypical Turkish male name) scores best in his German class test. The teacher tells him that from now on, he is a German. Little Ali goes home and proudly tells his father, who beats him up consequently. So Ali goes out crying, where he runs into a friend. "What's up, Ali?" (using made-up Turkish accent is vital! - "Was'los, Alder?") "You see, I've been German for two hours now, and already have trouble with Turkish people." This joke is really not only on Turkish people, but on the relationship between nationals, and is commonly told by Germans AND by Turkish people.

There is also an act that constructs a double-bind situation with a Turkish stud threatening violence to a (German) man who accidentally looked at his girl-friend, instrumenting stereotypes of Turkish/Arab culture. "Did you just look at my girl-friend?!" - "No, I didn't." - "Do you think she's ugly?!" - "No, no. She's beautiful." - "So you did look at her?!" - "Well, yes, I did, but I'm not at all interested in her!" - "Are you gay?..."

84.44.170.194 18:02, 5 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Wo geht's hier nach Aldi? - Zu Aldi! - Was, schon sechs? / in English roughly: What's the way after Aldi's? - To Aldi's! What - already six? Necessary information: "Zu" means both "closed" and "to", yet a grammatically correct sentence would need even in colloquial language a "Aldi ist zu" in this order. > --84.154.112.33 (talk) 19:02, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

humor about Holocaust / Third Reich
Such jokes may be mistaken for being antisemitic, so I going to introduce this. I do not have a proper source for it, but take my word as a German: There are Germans with intelligent humor, but they are not at all into politics. Any German person ever being involved in any kind of political attitude has no humor at all. This concerns, of course, the right wing, but also the left wing, and in fact the entire political spectrum. Therefore, joking about the Holocaust in a seemingly antisemitic way really is not. Period. Having said this, there are two modest examples I can think of.

Many German boys like to joke about the very things there parents are being so over-politically correct about. So they tell each other very stupid jokes like "How man Jews participated in the 1936 Olympic games?" (you can imagine where it goes from here) until one of them suddenly says aloud: "I really cannot laugh about cruel jokes like that! My grandfather died in a concentration camp!" - and when everybody is turning to him (best case: it happens to be in a classroom, with totally unwitting girls around), he says, in a sobbing voice: "It's true. He was... drunk... and fell from watch tower."

The other example I acutally heard from Jewish people, but it's more a joke on the total and rigid political correctness that German society is abusing to keep from real insight. It goes like "What is the highpoint of antifashism?" answer: "That's when Jews are made out of soap!" 87.78.158.52 18:21, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Better try Front Deutscher Äpfel. Polentario (talk) 16:01, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I actually wanted to add the one about the drunk grandfather on the watchtower. So I will add this one about racism in Germany: "How do you call an African who pilots an airplane" - "A pilot, you racist, what is wrong with you?!"
 * As a German I am expected to explain every pun to near obviousness, so: This joke draws it's pun on the receiver's expectation to be faced with blatant racism after hearing this. The surprising turn-around happens when the sender makes fun of this expectation and turns the whole heading around to a "Stiller Vorwurf" (a silent accusation) implying that it is actually the reciever who needed to think of racial stereotypes to complete the challenge, when in fact every man who pilots a plane is called a pilot. This social akwardness is intented and points out to the elephant-in-the-room-situation that is common about jokes on a subject like the Third Reich: day-to-day racism does exist and is largely considered a "Stimmungstöter" (a mood killer) when brought up in a casual situation. Another, much more risqué example is the one-phraser "One good thing we should never forget about Hitler, is... that he was actually the guy who succeded in killing Hitler!" But seriously, when in doubt, do not mention the war. -- 92.231.45.160 (talk) 23:13, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

German-Russian humor of North Dakota
I occasionally stumbled upon this text: IMO info from it deserves incorporation into the w-article (I already added this ref). `'Míkka 04:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
 * "It's almost Comedy Central: German humor has ties to the past..." By Paulette Tobin, published in the Grand Forks Herald, August 22, 1999, page E1

Is this article relevant
A lot of it seems like typical British stereotyping. My own anecdotal experience is different. Any ground in truth and/or a reputable source?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.129.190.166 (talk) 22:00, August 29, 2007 (UTC) I've just added some more depth to the negative perception of German humour, including by adding a culture section and slightly expanding on the language section. I've added a couple of references but there needs to be more analysis of German humour, including examples of modern comedians and their comedic style. I might get round to that if I have time! MathiasFox (talk) 21:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Personally I'm surprised there's an article at all.--129.215.51.5 (talk) 21:02, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I lol'd at that last comment. You must be a Brit :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.165.52.38 (talk) 10:03, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm surprised the article was this long. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.215.2.60 (talk) 04:15, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

This article is more a testimony to wikipedia having a sense of humour than a useful resource about its subject. So very relevant indeed. Well done! Stephanwehner (talk) 21:45, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

"Schadenfreude" and "Comedy"
I changed the definition of "Comedy" in the article. "Schadenfreude" has nothing to do with the definition of it. Additionally "Schadenfreude" isn't part of German humour as to call it "typical German". Schadenfreude got more and more popular in Germany due to British and American slapstick influencing German comedy and adoption of foreign gaming shows. Slaptstick, which is the epitome of Schadenfreude, is not typical German and not part of major traditional German humour as it is of other countries. - 84.163.112.99 (talk) 01:23, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Lack of humour...
This article lacks a very essential part of humour in Germany, namely that of political humour and satire - Germany has a most vivid Kabarett scene... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.73.118.104 (talk) 00:07, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, the Germans call it "Kabarett", but actually it is more like communist propaganda shows. It is not funny at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.121.53.209 (talk) 01:26, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

German grammar is less flexible?
in comparison to english grammar? i doubt that. you can reorder german sentences almost any way you like. this statement should be reformulated or deleted. 91.15.152.33 (talk) 10:53, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

German syntax is MUCH more flexible than its English counterpart. Ask any linguist, doesn't even have to be a German. Statement should be deleteted. 79.221.238.198 (talk) 14:39, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah clearly this person was just a stupid Germanophile trying to cut his favorite nationality some slack with this excuse...


 * German grammar and sentence forming is in general more flexible with it's four grammatical cases. English grammar is not more flexible, it is more unclear (one can say it's underdeveloped among european languages with slavic languages being even more exact than german language) which allows some kind of puns. Nevertheless english sentences are not as flexible as german one's; they are not in matter of keeping a sense, that's the joke! Some aspects of german language are completely unknown in english language: It is possible to split and reorder compound nouns and verbs. Laubsägen is not Laub sägen; do Zitronenfalter fold Zitronen? The truth is may be that british puns are just one type of wordplays possible in german language. 89.196.42.3 (talk) 13:26, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Either way this is an Encyclopaedia and not a contest, neither language should be stated as superior to the other.

"English-language jokes do not translate well because German grammar is more flexible and exact in matter of keeping a sense.[4]"

Both languages profit from similar flexibility in sentence structure. Due to the wide spread use of English as a second language such structures are simply forgotten about.

"It does not allow a sentence to be reordered so as to delay the punchline, one of the most common joke formats for English speakers.[4]"

This contradicts the previous sentence as it implies that reordering to achieve a delayed punchline is a common English feature that does not translate into the less flexible German language. Thus this implies the exact opposite to the previous statement.

"However German language has a more flexible but commonly understandable wording especially by neologisms, cacography and compounds."

the fact that all of the three linguistic techniques listed are listed in English shows that both languages are perfectly capable of these. In fact reading all three articles, there is not a single mentioning of such constructs being language specific. Just because there are English words partly adopted into the German language doesn't mean there is no equivalence in English (see List of German expressions in English)

"New entities are named by creating compounds, sometimes resulting in extremely long words.[4]"

Have a look at Longest word in English

"German grammar also allows to split compounds when reordering a sentence leading often to another sense and allowing some type of puns that are unknown in English language."

There is plenty of examples showing this again is possible in both languages, (see "Englishman" and "english man" or "Assemblywomen" and "assembly women").

"German humor is more prone to make use of local dialects, customs and varieties, which are abundant but less easy to translate."

This is simply not true, of course we know People like Mario Bath, Paul Panzer or Cindy aus Mazan. What about Jason Manford, Billy Connolly or even Lee Nelson.

"German political and social Kabarett on the other side has some kind of highbrow humor."

The comparison made shows that both languages allow low level and trickier more sophisticated humor.

I think it is fair to say that both languages have a similar way of bringing joy and laughter. Jokes simply barely ever translate well. I will start changing at least the introduction.

DrGranit (talk) 12:48, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I (a Dutch speaker, fluent in English, notions of German) must say that English is more "flexible" in the sense that it is easier to have double meanings. "Fruit flies like a banana". Translating this in German with their four cases would have to choose between one of the two possible meaning in English, taking the joke away. Though I am not sure if "flexibility" is a good term for less ambigue...

(Hey, I think you forgot to sign off up there! I'm someone else.)

I'm an American, have a degree in German, studied Dutch, and taught Spanish at the university level. I think the Guardian article says more about the stick Brits of a certain class keep stuck up their bloomin' arses than what it says about Germans. I once dated a Chilean woman who told me "Our jokes are different from American jokes because we use a lot of double meanings". If you think speakers of other languages can't make jokes because all their words have exactly one meaning, you're painfully stupid and they're probably laughing at you, not with you. Bundesverfassungsgericht = Federal constitutional court? "Gericht" can mean also mean "culinary dish", not just "court of justice". "Zug" means both "train" and "draft" (as pointed out by Mark Twain, I believe.) "Zaepfchen" means both "uvula" and "suppository". "Dichtung" means "gasket" and "poetry". And the ever popular "Mutterkuchen" ("mother cake") actually mean "placenta". That Germans lack flexibility in word order -- I wish the Guardian would pay me to pontificate with such profound ignorance. It is a general principle that highly inflected languages like German permit flexible word order, while less inflected languages rely on order to convey grammatical function. Anyway, the punchline is the last sentence of the joke, not the last word. Just ax the reference to the Guardian article, and anything derived from it.

Rexdwyer (talk) 03:44, 1 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, as a point of national honor (just kidding): Fruit flies like a banana allows of just one sensible meaning (otherwise, it would be A fruit etc. and - what do you mean?). But we do can say (just quoting a standard): Warum fährt der Bundespräsident nicht mit dem Zug zu Terminen? Weil da der Schaffner immer sagt: "Bitte zurücktreten!" (Why does the President not go to appointments by train? Because the service personnel keep announcing: "Please abdicate", to wit please stand back.) Now that could even be said to be about a recent political event:-) On the contrary, in Bavaria, the same sentence is (really) always: "Bitte zurückbleiben". Or rather: "B'deee - zruckbleim." Why? Because in Bavaria the only reigning party is the CSU, you do not need to zurücktreten. I once invented myself (no guarantee of originality, though) the joke: "Abteilung kehrt", wenn I was a Bundeswehr draftee and engaged in "room and area purifying" (to wit, cleaning). Abteilung kehrt is the official command for: "Formation - turn around", but it can also be short for "the people around here are bothering." [Is that the right word? I mean the thing you use broomsticks to.] A confession to a third party that you love a certain girl, "Ich liebe sie", I love her, can be quite misunderstood as well (to "Ich liebe Sie", I love you). And so on. :-) --93.134.250.164 (talk) 01:04, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * By the way, as to the long words: Writing Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänskajütenreinigungsmatrose or Danube Steamship Navigation Company skipper cabin cleaning bluejacket is just a matter of orthography. The two languages are actually at one as far as compounds go! Only in English there are empty-spaces (and sometimes, no empty spaces); in German there are none. --93.135.104.231 (talk) 13:16, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

antisemitic public humor
There is a special anglicism in germany (like a unwritten "law"), that jokes about Turkish people or other foreigners only by a member of these groups (i.E. a Turkish Men) can made in public with political correctness. So typical in TV jokes about Turkish people (lives in Germany) is made by a Turkish Men (live in Germany). If a "German" make jokes about this group it understand as not political correct, antisemitic and its possible he get negative feedback. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.145.211.209 (talk) 09:45, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It's the same in Britain. Only Jewish people are allowed to make Jewish jokes and only Irish people (e.g. the late Dave Allen) are allowed to make Irish jokes. Biscuittin (talk) 11:50, 8 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Bullshit. Many German comedians make jokes e.g. about the Holocaust and about Turkish immigrants. You should pay better attention and read less propaganda. --87.79.176.62 (talk) 15:33, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Neutrality tag
Was the neutrality tag added by a humourless German or a politically-correct Brit? Biscuittin (talk) 11:45, 8 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Indented line Check the history? Stephanwehner (talk) 21:42, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Relationship to Dutch/Flemish humour?
Many of the jokes literally exist in Dutch. For instance, the "Fritzchen" joke exists literally in Dutch, with "Fritzchen" being the equivalent of "Jantje" ("Johnny" or a kid named "John"). A farmer's joke would be: "Als de melk smaakt naar stront, is de koe ongezond." (if the milk tasts like shit then the cow is unhealthy) of "Wie tegenwind z'n akker bemest draagt best een bruin vest." (he who fertilizes his field in a headwind is advised to wear a brown coat) Even the last antiwitz has an almost literal translation: "Wat is het verschil tussen een berg? - Je bent er sneller over dan te voet!"