BIGpedia - Bilingual pun - Encyclopedia and Dictionary Online

A bilingual pun is a pun in which a word in one language is similar to a word in another language. Typically, use of bilingual puns results in in jokes, since there is often a very small overlap between speakers of the two languages.

Contents

1 Examples

1.1 Portuguese
1.2 Swedish
1.3 Norwegian
1.4 Spanish
1.5 German
1.6 French
1.7 Japanese

2 See also

Examples

Portuguese

Which is better, snow or milk?

Better leite than neve.

(Leite is milk, and neve is snow. The phrase with the Portuguese words substituted into it sounds like "better late than never".)

Swedish

"My name is Jönsson, with two pricks over the first 'o'".

(Prick is Swedish for dot.)

An English couple are travelling by train in Scania (southern Sweden). At one stop, two local farm boys board the train and take their seats in the same compartment. One is tall, blond, and striking, while the other one is short and plain. The Englishwoman admires the tall youth for a moment, then remarks to her husband:

"What a handsome face!"

The short boy blushes and answers:

"Näeij, frun, det var jau."

("What a handsome face" sounds like the Swedish phrase "Var det han som fes?", i.e. "Was it he who farted?" -- especially if pronounced with the Scanian dialect of Swedish. The boy's answer means: "No, ma'm, it was I.")

Norwegian

"The plane took off with a great fart and disappeared in the horizon as a prick"

(Fart is how one would spell "speed". Prick is "dot".)

"What a mess you have made!"

(Mess is almost the word for "conference".)

"Make love, not vår"

(vår rhymes with "war," and means spring (the season) in Norwegian. This pun was used by IKEA in advertisements.)

Spanish

A Spanish speaker who knows no English goes into a clothes store in an English-speaking country and wants a garment but doesn't know how to ask for it. After the manager shows the Spanish speaker every article of clothing in the store, she shows the Spanish speaker a pair of socks, and the Spanish speaker says:

"¡Eso sí que es!" ("That's what it is!") The manager responds:

"If you could spell it all along, why didn't you say so?"

("¡Eso sí que es!" sounds like the English letter sequence "S-O-C-K-S.")

German

Q: According to Sigmund Freud, what comes between fear and sex?

A: Fünf.

(German numbers - vier, fünf, sechs = four, five, six.)

Before the Battle of Normandy, two German spies are infiltrated in the Allied Headquarters. Before they can retire and radio to Berlin, they have to attend the officers's cocktail. One of the two spies goes to the barman and asks, in perfect English :

- "Two whiskies, please."

- "Dry?"

- "Nein, zwei!"

(In German, drei (three) is pronounced quite like dry.)

In addition, the German word for team (Mannschaft) opens itself up for various bits of humor centered around its sounding like the English words man shaft, implying the penis.

French

A young Canadian lad buys three cats and names them Un, Deux and Trois before heading back home across the river. His boat capsizes; he arrives home half-frozen but still alive, sadly crying «Maman! Maman! Un, Deux, Trois cats sank!»

(The punchline sounds like the first five numbers in French, un deux trois quatre cinq.)

A variant of this: There were two cats, named "One-Two-Three" and "Un-Deux-Trois". They were good friends. One day they decided to have a race swimming across the English Channel to France. When One-Two-Three arrived, it couldn't find Un-Deux-Trois, so it asked a person nearby if they knew about Un-Deux-Trois. To One-Two-Three's horror, the person replied "Un deux trois quatre cinq!" (Un deux trois cat sank)

Q - Why do French people only have one egg for breakfast?

A - Because one egg's 'un oeuf'. (one egg's enough)

Japanese

As Japanese has both a large number of English loanwords and a lot of contact with American culture, English-Japanese bilingual puns are plentiful.

A man buys a car, and wants to name it, but can't decide if he should give it a male or female name. He asks his Japanese friend, who says, "Female." The man asks why, so the friend responds, "Each Nissan, she go."

(The punchline sounds like the first five numbers in Japanese, ichi ni san shi go.)

The theme song to the anime series His and Her Circumstances contains the following pun;

-You may dream, masshiro na...

(You may dream, pure white...)

"You may" sounds like yume, the Japanese word for "dream".

Puns on the word "Ai", which means "love" in Japanese, and is pronounced like the words "I" and "Eye", are quite common. The title of the manga/anime series Video Girl Ai is a bilingual pun. Ai means "love" in Japanese, which fits Ai's character. But in English, AI means artificial intelligence, which also befits Ai's character. Also, the title of an episode of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion is, roughly translated,"The Beast That Shouted "Ai" at the Heart of the World". Ai could either be a transliteration of "I" or mean "love".

One of the character names in the manga Maison Ikkoku works as a bilingual pun, but it's probably unintentional. Ichinose would read as "itchy nose" to an English reader, even though it's not pronounced that way.