jokes

so my guest mother’s son, florian, is a history and english major at Humboldt, and we’ve had some good talks about lots of different subjects. he usually has a very interesting perspective, which makes for fun conversations. anyways, here are three topical jokes that he told me in english.

the first two came up when we were talking about learning different languages, and he remarked that in europe the stereotype is that the brits tend to not care for learning new languages.

1.

what do you call a person who speaks three languages? multilingual.

what do you call a person who speaks two languages? bilingual.

what do you call a person who speaks one language? a brit (you can substitute “an american” if you like)

2.

while traveling in britain, a swede stops to ask directions from two brits. the problem is he doesn’t know english. so first he asks them in swedish, but they can’t answer him. then he asks them in french, but again they don’t understand him. he asks them in german, and still no answer. he tries spanish, but no luck. he gives up and walks away. while he’s walking away one brit says to the other, “hey george, don’t you think it would be useful to learn another language?” the other one answers, “no, did you see how many languages that guy could speak, and what good did it do him?”

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

ok and this last one is about the humanities. florian is a history and english major, so he can really relate to having absolutely no certainty in the job market.

a biologist asks “how does it work?”

a physicist asks “why does it work?”

a humanities student asks, “do you want fries with that?”

sad but true, oh well