A pun my word

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I’m not sure if I mentioned this in one of my earlier pieces about humour, but one of the major engines used to make a joke is the pun. This is a device hingeing on a word that has more than one meaning or on words that sound identical or very similar (hence the title of this piece: “A pun my word” / “Upon my word”).

There are lots of these in Shakespeare, who must have been an amusing bloke to share a bottle of wine with. One of my favourite puns comes in Carry on Cleo, a film that makes fun of our ideas about ancient history. Here, when Julius Caesar (played by the outrageous Kenneth Williams) learns that conspirators are about to assassinate him, he cries out in horror: “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!”
(Pause, while my editor and readers cry out in horror at the diabolical pun).

This leads me on to Dad jokes which I know I’ve written about before, but I’ve got a new one for you. (More cries of horror). Dad jokes are the sort of thing that well-meaning fathers tell at children’s birthday parties, until the kids can’t bear any more and start throwing the food at him.

Dad jokes are closely related to shaggy dog stories, which go on and on and climax with a groan-provoking line, usually a pun. Here’s an example (though an unusually brief one), for which I trust the editorial team have provided the illustration I asked for:

A chap decides he wants an unusual pet and, after an hour in a pet shop, purchases a centipede. Taking it home, he houses it in an old metal biscuit tin, which has everything inside it to keep the centipede comfortable. The next day he taps on the lid of the tin and calls out: “Alfie! We’re going for a walk!” No reply. He taps again and calls out: “Alfie! Walkies!” Still no reply. He taps again and calls out: “Alfie! I’m taking you for a walk!” And at this point a little voice comes from inside the tin: “I heard you the first time. I’m still putting on my shoes.”

[Zoological note: centipedes are anthropods; the name comes from the Latin for “hundred feet” and while they don’t always have a hundred feet, they have lots. They can give you a very nasty sting.]
For my next treat (“treat?!” I hear my long-suffering editor groan. “Don’t you mean torture?”)–be that as it may, for my next treat, a punning joke that can also be used as a young English language learner’s spelling exercise.

Regarding spelling—specifically, what is sometimes ironically called the English spelling system (“system” being a gigantic misnomer) – let me expand on what I said in my piece some months ago in an article titled “Subject to correction.”

All languages—English being a doubtful case—have a spelling system, that is, rules that guide the relationship between the written and the spoken word. Any particular system can come as a bit of a shock when you begin to learn a new language.

For example, in Spanish the letter “g” is pronounced like the English “h” sound and “j” like “h” made at the back of the throat, as if you’re about to cough. The double “ll” is pronounced like the English “y”, so the name of the famous Andean mammal, the llama, is pronounced like English “yahmah.”

All this is startling and difficult at first, but once you’ve got the hang of it, you’re fine, because the rule always applies. If you begin to learn French, you have to realise that there are silent letters (don’t ask me why), so “hotel” is pronounced “otel”, and the name of one of my favourite types of red wine, Merlot, is pronounced “Mare-low.” Again, once you’ve got the rules under your belt, you’re set.

And when you learn Sesotho you have to grasp the fact that the letter “l” is pronounced differently depending on which vowel follows it — see the difference between “Lerato” and “Lineo”. [This of course is the case with Lesotho orthography (writing system), not South African]. Of the languages I’ve learnt to some extent or other, the most difficult rules I’ve come across are for Portuguese, but the same principle holds: once you’ve learnt the rules, it’s plain sailing.

And then there’s English, and oh dear, oh dear (or, in one of my favourite Yiddish phrases, oy veh!. I mean, what can you say about a spelling “system” in which “plough” rhymes with “now”, but “rough” rhymes with “stuff”, and “furlough” rhymes with “her low”?

So, to conclude, here’s a little joke. Recite the following to young learners of English and get them to write it out, telling them that the names of the horses have to be written as numbers, but everything else as words:

1 1 was a horse’
1 2 was 1 2.
1 1 1 a race.
1 2 1 1 2.

Chris Dunton is a former Professor of English and Dean of Humanities at the National University of Lesotho.