German Humour - Language

Language

German-language humour is, for linguistic reasons, constructed differently from English-language humour (e.g., British humour and American humour). The construction of a sentence in German (due to the regular use of compound word constructions) means that German humour relies more on humorous ideas than on wordplay. German grammar is often (but not always) flexible in the sense that one can reorder a sentence without changing its meaning.

Nevertheless, in German there are a series of jokes based on a variety of meanings, while English uses several words.

Example from East German political humour: "The train announcer at the main station was imprisoned!" – "Why?" – "He announced 'Please step back/abdicate!' as Erich Honecker's train was arriving!"; in German zurücktreten, bitte! can mean both please, step back! as well as please, abdicate!.

However, German wordplay can also be based on compound word constructions. German phonology has a high count of vowels and consonants which often offers the potential for puns due to subtle differences in pronunciation (for example; Leitkultur is mispronounced Leidkultur (sorrow culture) ). Not only does the German language allow one to easily create compound nouns and verbs, it also permits one to split them to reorder a sentence. Compounds often have another sense than singular words. This grammatical area of German wordplay does not have a direct English-language equivalent.

Non-German speakers may find understanding German humour difficult, simply due to the language barrier. It is likely that some jokes, puns and humorous turns of phrase would be lost in translation.

Hansgeorg Stengel, a German Kabarettist and writer, said: Germans are unable to speak the German language. Commonly or apparently incorrect usage of German grammar is another form of humour ironically called Stilblüten (bloomer). Edmund Stoiber once said Wir müssen den Kindern richtiges Deutsch lernen (literally We must learn the children correct German) leading to unintended humour because while he applied himself to correctness, he didn't speak the statement in the correct way (using "learn" instead of "teach"). Using "Lernen" with dative and accusative to mean teach is however a typical example of something Germans do say in day-to-day life. Stoiber said this publicly on the Bavarian cultural event Politscher Aschermittwoch, the "Political Ash Wednesday", where a more popular language is used, the Duden classifies this as "colloquial usage", but German teachers will normally count it as a mistake.