Speak To Me

Language is a fascinating thing. Imagine our ancestors before they learned to communicate through words. I suppose there were a lot of grunts and gestures involved, but somewhere along the line, language emerged. Now consider that there are more than 6,000 languages spoken in the world today (according to Stephen Anderson of the Linguistic Society of America). In Papua-New Guinea alone, there are an estimated 832 languages spoken by a population of about 4 million people. That is what I would call linguistic diversity. But that diversity is not spread evenly throughout the world: there are 230 languages spoken in Europe, and about 2,200 in Asia.

In the United States, English is king, but there is a growing Hispanic population. In 2005 the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that there were 31 million U.S. resident who spoke Spanish at home. That’s about 10% of the population, and the significance of that statistic is not lost on advertisers.

I’ve recently learned a few things that I found fascinating. For instance, in Farsi (spoken mainly in Iran), there are no upper and lower case letters, and there are no words for “he” or “she.” Irish and Chinese have something in common: neither language has a word equivalent to “yes.” I’m hoping a reader from the British Isles can explain to me what an Irishman says when asked if he’d like to go down to the pub for eight or ten quick ones.

When I was in high school, there was a two-year foreign language requirement for the college prep track. My choices were limited to French and Spanish. I would have preferred to take German, but it had been removed from the curricula of many schools (including mine) during World War I. So I took Spanish.

Spanish is pervasive enough in American society that most people know at least some Spanish. Here’s an example of how easy it is to learn the language and apply it. With only a year of high school Spanish, you too could write a song like this.



But here is what I want to know: are other languages as conducive to puns as English? My sister Linda recently sent me some puns, and the more clever among them follow. As I’ve written before, the more subtle the pun, the better I like it. But how in the world did mankind go from no language to this?

1. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
2. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
3. The butcher backed into the meat grinder and got a little behind in his work.
4. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.
5. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
6. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
7. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
8. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, 'No change yet.'
9. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
10. A backward poet writes inverse.