Richard Lederer is THE linguistic humorist in the states. Most jokes about the oddities of the English language circulating on the Internet are taken from his books. If you have a keen eye for mistakes and general knowledge of the western history, you may, I'm warning you, laugh to death reading the following compilation of students' errors.
The Western World According to Student Bloopers
by Richard Lederer
St Paul's School
The inhibitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in Sarah
Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhibitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation.
The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular
cube. The Pramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the
Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of
their children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?"
God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of
Issac, stole his brother's birthmark. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his twelve sons to be patriarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.
Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleaved bread, which is bread made without any ingredients.
Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten
commandmentes. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar.
He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical
times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.
Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three
kinds of colums - Corinthian, Doric and Ironic.
They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the
mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable.
Achilles appears in "The Illiad", by Homer. Homer also wrote the
"Oddity", in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people
advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.
In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits,
and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath.
The government of Athen was democratic because the people took the law
into their own hands.
There was no war in Grece, as the mountains were so high that they
couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing.
When they fought the Parisians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the
Persians had more men.
Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Greeks. History call people Romans
because they never stayed in one place for very long.
At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar
extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul.
The Ides of March killed him because they thought he was going to be
made king. Nero was a cruel tyrany who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur
lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before
the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, and the victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks.
Finally, the Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged
twice for the same offense.
In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest
writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote literature.
Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple
while standing on his son's head.
The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of
their human being.
Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling
papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull.
It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made
him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible.
Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented
cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood.
Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.
The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found
walking difficult because he had an abess on his knee.
Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success.
When Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted "hurrah."
Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.
The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear.
Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his
plays. He lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloqui.
In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Macbeth to kill the King by
attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic
couplet.
Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miquel Cervantes. He wrote
"Donkey Hote". The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote
"Paradise Lost." Then his wife dies and he wrote "Paradise Reagined."
During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great
navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His
ships were called the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Fe.
Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and that was called the Pilgrim's
Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by
Indians,who came down the hill rolling, their was hoops before them.
The Indian squabs carried porposies on their back. Many of the Indian
heroes were killed, among with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them.
The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died
and many babies were born. Capitain John Smith was responsible for all
this.
One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks
in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their pacels through the post without stamps.
During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone
walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the
colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.
Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented
Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two signers of the Declaration of Independence.
Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and
a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing cats
backwards and declared "a horse divided against itself cannot stand."
Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
George Washington married Matha Curtis and in due time became the
Father of Our Country. Then the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.
Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent.
Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which
he built with his own hands.
When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, "In
onion there is strength."
Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg address while traveling from
Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope.
He also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth
Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims.
On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got
shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedl insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare
invented electricity and also wrote a book called "Candy". Gravity was
invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when
the apples are flaling off the trees.
Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel.
Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present.
Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote
loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.
France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was
accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were tremling
in their shoes.
Then the Spanish gorillas came down from the hills and nipped at
Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained.
He wanted an heir to inheret his power, but since Josephine was a
baroness, she couldn't bear him any children.
The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is
in the East and the sun sets in the West.
Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years.
Her reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.
The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and
thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up.
Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work of a
hundred men.
Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis Pastuer discovered a
cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the "Organ of the Species".
Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx
Brothers.
The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a
surf, ushered in a new error in the anal of human history.
- Re: The Western World According to Student Bloopersposted on 01/15/2005
廖大哥的这些字母我看得满眼发花,然而一篇《隐私 》让我连着笑了一下午,我今天又多了两条皱纹!20多年前我还在上初中,呵呵,您这文章真是太好的幽默小说素材。问侯您,看来以后我和我的小毛头俩的“英格利息”请您这个老师是定了! - posted on 01/15/2005
Posted on Sunday, November 14, 2004 - 04:21 am:
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隐私
·廖 康·
“我不相信,”华莱士教授几乎是气急败坏地用英语对我说:“你们中国话会没有privacy这个字!我解释了半节课,学生们还是不懂。说字典上写的是安静、独自一人。他们用的是什么字典?我就不相信,字典里没有一个词,表示自己的生活,自己的事情!”
这是二十多年前的事了,那时我从英国拿了学位,回到北京一所高校的英语系里教书。华莱士是我们学校新请来的外教。他这个问题还真不好解释。这不是语言问题,而是和文化差异有关。有本大词典倒是把privacy翻译成“隐私”了,可生活里没人用这个词。即使用,也不是英文那意思。社会主义大家庭里,有什么好隐瞒的?一切都是公开的。西方文化里的禁忌,什么年龄啊,收入啊,那是我们中国人初次见面的头几个必问的问题……我滔滔不绝地给华莱士解释起来。
“为什么一定要问岁数?我可不想让人家觉得我是个老头子。我这样子不是年富力强吗?”他狡黠地挤了下眼睛,看来不那么着急了。
“不知道你多大岁数,我怎么称呼你呀?是兄还是弟?是伯伯还是叔叔?还有大姐小妹,嫂子弟妹不是?我们中国,那是礼仪之邦啊!辈分伦常可不能弄错了。不问年龄能行吗?”
“那问人家收入干什么?”
“要说收入啊,不就是那点死工资吗?谁还不知道谁呀?二级工四十块零一大毛,大学毕业五十六。到哪儿都差不离儿,比阴晴雨雪的变化还少。问你挣多少钱,就跟拿天气打哈哈一样。倒不是真在乎你的收入。哪象你们美国人,这工资就跟那话似的,总得遮盖着。收入少,羞愧得见不得人。收入多,也不好意思自大呀?别看你们美国人爱吹牛,轮到这事,都怕挨劁。”我跟华莱士已经很熟了,时不时就逗逗闷子。“还是我们社会主义好,人人平等!没有隐私。什么叫隐私?那是偷了东西,偷了汉子,干了那种见不得人的事。社会主义社会,除了党的领导、国家机密、什么都是透明的。”
“什么都是透明的?那不可能吧!你们中国人从来不谈性。夫妻俩的事总该是悄悄的吧?”
“那也比你们公开。那天大伙儿笑话小王,你问我笑什么,我说一言难尽。今儿个,我就给你讲讲。你也就明白为什么我们没有privacy这个词儿了。”
小王要结婚了。里里外外要张罗的事儿不少。光请客这一件,就把他忙晕了。整整十桌,除了本家,七十几位客人,他以为该请的都请到了。到了儿,还是少请了一位,工会的黄主任。这黄主任你可能没见过,她长得出奇的丑。还记得最近上演的香港电影《画皮》吧?那里边的女鬼,黄主任甭化妆,直接就能演。尤其是她那颗暴齿,龇出唇外,足有半公分,化妆都化不了那么象!她还特能说,嗓门又特大,特别喜欢跟大伙儿宣布文件,宣讲政策什么的。但说不了几句,那黄色的暴齿就把白生生的唾液导流出唇外。每当欲滴未滴,别人为她捏把汗时,黄主任就会自然而然地“呲溜”一声把那哈啦子吸回去,然后没事儿人一样接着宣讲。但小王还真不是因为人家丑就没请她,不知怎的,楞把人家给忘了。我用你给我们介绍的弗罗伊德给他分析了一下,认定是他的下意识在作怪。因为一星期前,黄主任在开证明信时,把他的性别给勾错了。
“你们开什么玩笑?俩女的结什么婚?”婚姻办事处的干事低头看着证明信,一本正经地问道。
“什么俩女的?”小王莫名其妙地反问:“我是男的,她是女的。怎么会有俩女的?”
“你是男的?”干事抬起头来看了看小王,满腹狐疑地诘问:“哪这证明信上怎么说你是女的?”
“啊?那不可能!”
“你自己看看吧!”
可不是吗?黄主任楞把他的性别勾成女的了!
“哎哟,大叔唉,”小王一急,给人家辈份升了一级:“您看这不是明摆着的吗?我是男的啊!我们工会那糊涂主任给勾错了。您瞧我这胡子,哎哟!我刚给它刮了。您瞧这寸劲儿,怎么都赶上了!您、您瞧我这喉结。”可他一扬脖儿,那喉结也摸不着了。小王一急,跟人家干事说:“要不这么着得了,咱们去厕所,我让您验验身。”
“你干什么你?”干事一抹脸,站起身来严厉地训斥道:“要是你们工会主任没勾错,那我不成耍流氓了?”
“哎哟,那我怎么办呀?”小王都快急哭了。
“有什么不好办的,回去找你们工会主任改正啊!”
没辙!小王和未婚妻乘兴而来,败兴而归。刚一出那婚姻办事处的门,就听屋里轰笑起来。为此,小王没少挨骂。新娘还没娶进门,就先矮了三分。
婚礼那天,小王并没有注意他忘记请黄主任了。直到一星期后,我送他的英国润滑套用完了,他才想起黄主任。中国的工会跟美国的不一样,和执政党没二心,就是帮助党搞好大伙的福利,什么发电影票呀,分瓜果梨桃啊,还管发放避孕套。计划生育,那可是国家的百年大计。我们党,多英明啊!你看这政策制定的,由单位免费发放避孕套。哪象你们美国,还得花钱买不说,那不是给偷情的和婚前性行为提供方便吗?还是社会主义好。政治局几位英明领导一商量,把什么都为咱们老百姓考虑周全了。唯一美中不足的是,国内的产品都是干巴巴的。我是过来人,送小王的礼物可真帮他大忙了。用完了那一打,我也没有那高级货再给他了。和我们一样,他也得去工会要。那得跟黄主任打交道啊,小王问我怎么办,我说带包喜糖吧,选大虾酥,别让硬糖锛了她那大板牙。
小王恭恭敬敬地把一包大虾酥递给黄主任,客套两句后,小声说:“有件事儿,请您帮帮忙。”
“哟,敢情是有事啊!要不然你就想不起我了,是吧?”
“瞧您说的,您是工会啊!我们的福利都仗着您呢!”
“福利?还没到分福利的时候啊?逢年过节才分呢,你又不是不知道。” 黄主任故意跟小王装傻,嗓门比往常还大些,引得屋里几个人注意了。
“哎哟,我的黄主任,您小点声。我是跟您要,要,要那个套儿啊。”小王尽量压低了声说。
“要什么套?” 黄主任的嗓门更大了。小王的脸顿时红了,他觉得屋里那几位好象都瞥了他一眼,耳朵似乎也支棱起来了。有一位本来都要走出门口了,又转了回来,好象忘了什么东西,四下找。而且每一位都小心翼翼的,连翻报纸都轻轻、慢慢的,尽量不弄出声音来。
小王鼓足了勇气才悄悄地说出来。
“嗨,这有什么不好意思的!” 黄主任大笑着说道:“应该的,应该的。我们党鼓励晚婚晚育。可不能一结婚就想着生孩子啊!你还得等指标。这避孕套嘛,有大、中、小三个号,你是什么号啊?”
这时候小王,用我们笑话不会喝酒的话说,是从脑门红到肚脐眼了。反正大伙都听见了,他也豁出去了。可他还真不记得那英国货是不是标有尺码,就算有,也未必和国货对得上号啊。“那就给我中号吧!”
“嗨!这可不能就合。上次把性别给你勾错了,把你的婚耽误了半天,瞧把你急的!跟我这通嚷嚷!我最怕你们这号老实人,一急了比谁都凶。咱们共产党最讲认真,你还是到里屋试试。别回头小了进不去,大了突噜,又跟我急。”
屋了那几位憋到这会儿,再也憋不住了,噗吃地乐出声来。小王就差叫她黄妈了。她把小王耍够了才问:“好吧,你要几个?”
“十个。”
“十个!那够我们用一年的。你们年轻人哪,要节育,也要节欲呀……”小王不等她说完,抓过那些小包包就跑了。后面一阵哄堂大笑。
第二天,小王又来到工会。“对不起,黄主任,我得跟您换。”
“换什么?”
“换号。我得要大号的。”幸好屋里其他人不是昨天那拨,接不上碴,还不知道他们在说什么。
“你看不是!我说让你试试,你不试。不听老人言,吃亏在眼前了吧!新娘子没怨你?”
屋里那几位扭过头来看他们了。小王迅速掏出那些小包包,塞给黄主任,低声说:“您就别寒碜我了,赶紧给换了吧。”
“好,好,给你换。换大号的。嗨!怎么就剩七个了?你这不合适,不合适的,一晚上还用了仨!”
这时,屋里几位都明白他们说什么了,吃吃地笑起来。
小王死活不肯再去工会了。他央求媳妇跟她们单位要,媳妇说:“你不好意思,我就好意思了?那有女的要男人用的东西!”最后打熬不住,还是她去要了。小王觉得这下再不会受羞辱了,尽管在家他已经成了严重的“气管炎”病患者。
万万没想到,一个月后,黄主任居然找上头来了。当着一群同事的面,她笑呵呵地大声说:“小王啊!好久没见你了。怎么也不来领避孕套了?没有和新娘子闹别扭吧?没有生病吧?该不是打算要孩子了吧?你可还没有指标呢……”小王满脸通红,回头就跑,后面又传来一阵大笑。
华莱士教授也笑得前仰后合了。好不容易才喘过气来,问了我一句:“那小王觉得怎么样?”(How did Little Wang feel about it?)
Nov.11,2004
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温柔一刀 - Re:隐私posted on 01/17/2005
还是那句老话:"有什么问题,你放马过来!反正我也不会."
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