I think we can all acknowledge by this point that I love a good pun. I can’t help it! Good word-play, however groan-worthy it actually sounds once the joke is made, makes me tick. Manipulation of the English language into humorous forms is just plain awesome. And it is often really hard to explain when trying to teach it in another language.
Oh, there are puns incorporated into humor in other languages too. It isn’t that uncommon to see a joke confusing ‘hana’ (meaning flower) and ‘hana’ (meaning nose) in Japanese, for example. But trying to explain how, ‘A horse walked into a bar and the bartender said, ‘Why the long face?” is funny to someone who doesn’t natively speak English and isn’t aware of the cultural context surrounding the traditional role of the bartender-as-therapist in Western culture is something else entirely. Even after explaining how the joke works, even in English you’re likely to still ask why someone let a horse into a bar anyway. Surely that violates a health code or two.
So yes. I make no apologies for my pun today, groan-worthy and lame as it might be. Puns may not be the height of humor, but they’re still pretty awesome to me.
