English humour.

Школьная научно – практическая конференция

Секция: английский язык

ИССЛЕДОВАТЕЛЬСКАЯ РАБОТА

Тема:English humour.

Ижевск, 2018.

Content

Introduction………………………………………………………..……………...............................3

Chapter one. Theoretical part.

1.1 The history of English humour……………………………………………….………………….4

1.2 Features and characteristics of English humour…………………………….............................4

Chapter two. Practical part.

2.1 Specific of translation…………………………………………………..…….…………………..7

2.2 What do my classmates think about English humour? ……………..………............................8

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...………………………10

List of literature……………………………………………………..………..……………………..11

Introduction

To support international attitude between all countries and all persons from different countries is so important in 21 century. To achievement this result people start to use English language as mean of international communicate with people different nations.

When people study language they learn the cultural, singularities, sometimes variety of study language and usually they copy some habits, special gestures, intonation and accent. Often they don't concentrate their attention on humor, but humor is one of main element of cultural. If man know humor, he can understand thoughts of native speakers, their viewpoint and he can start to communicate well with person from another country with the help by joke.

I want to tell about English humor, its singularities and nuances, which we don't look or don't understand from not right translate — sometimes so specific, sometimes so incorrect — and, of course, not full understanding of native cultural.

To escape this not understanding in future I want to study English humor in some little details and can feel their well with the help by my work. To achievement the result — full understanding of English jokes and can joke self — I need to make next goal and tasks of my work.

The aim is identify the features of translate English jokes into Russian

Tasks are

·         To learn history of English jokes

·         To learn features of English jokes

·         To analyse the nuances of English humor

·         To learn usual topics of English jokes

Object of study is English jokes

Subject of study is the translation of English jokes into Russian

History of English humor

English humor was founded many years ago and it is associated with traditions.

«Sense of humor must be culturing» was writing in old English books about good manners of 15-16 centuries and English people thought «Perfect man have to have humor, or else e isn't idol». People started thinking it was true after Jeffrey Chaucer (1340-1400y.), William Shakespeare (1564-1616y.) and Ben Jonson (1572-1637y.) wrote their books. These men become “the fathers” of English humour and they often used humoristic moments in their works. People liked that and started to use jokes in everyday speech.

The next example about English humor is an old is real historical event. A king of England Eduard I seize Wales said to Welshmen, who had another language then, that an English-speaking person didn’t govern in Wales and he made his baby son a Wales prince. After this situation in 1824 year humor began common between English people and then was founded a basis of typical modern English humour was founded.

The “gold century” in English literature was 19 century. This time had a big effect on English jokes. Many people thought humor was like knowledge and today people can read English books of 19 century and can find many jokes in the texts.

Today English people joke about their calm and their slowness and say in funny form about impudence of American and self-criticism of French people.

“Humor is a part of everyday life for English people? But they’re really calm and joke with serious face too” wrote Czech Karel Capek.

Features and characteristics of English humor

Humor is a human’s ability to joke, to laugh at some minuses in another people and in yourself, to understand jokes by someone and not be hurt by joke.

For English people humor isn’t way to expression of theirself. It’s so strange, but true. Many people from all the world have individual sense of humor, but English humor is a national features. English people have the same jokes, so it’s boring for them to joke on themselves, and English people begin to joke on tourists. They usually say: ”Excuse me, are you stupid or are you not English?”. It’s not offence, because man doesn’t want to hurt someone. He just gives a challenge to himself and looks at your reaction.

The next features are typical for most of English jokes:

      Location: Thames, London, a countryside house, a Golf course, pub. Rarer: beach, train, resort, other countries.

·         Heroes: gentlemen, their footmen, policemen. Ladies in jokes are rarer.

·         Irishmen are usual slowly and stupid heroes.

·         Scots are greedy.

·         Butler with name Barrymore is impudent and is not afraid to joke on his owners.

Topics of English jokes is also so monotonous.

The first is weather. It’s so popular between English men and they often joke about rain, fog and umbrellas, which people can miss in metro.

“How long will rain be?”

“I don’t know. I live 35 years here.”

The second topics is English slowness, which tourist from other countries can see in English lifestyle and in drinking tea at 5p.m.

Hotel guest to worker:

“Can you give me a glass of water?”

“Yes, I can”.

Worker give a glass of water to hotel guest. Some time passed:

“Can you give me a glass of water again?”

“I can.”

“Some time passed.”

“Can you give me a glass of water another?”

“What’s happen?”

“It’s a fire!”

But Englishmen never jokes about 5 o’clock’s tea. British people don’t like this humor and they can be hurt by your joke.

And the last topic of English humor is neighboring countries. They really like to joke about Frenchmen, Irishmen, Germans, Scots, which have many nuances to joke or irony on English people opinion.

“Do you speak English?”

“Only with a dictionary.”

‘Do you shy to speak with people?”

It’s a universal joke to all nations.

There are varieties of English humor. They are so same with Russian varieties of humor.

·         Ethnic slurs is a ethnical jokes, which usual magnify traditions and nation features:

American tourist walk on London and say to English man: “the building can be higher in America.”

“Of course, it’s an asylum!” – answer English man.

·         Dry humor is ironic and satirical jokes:

“We must go only 6 miles on the map, but with your help we went 10 miles!”

“You have to confess that 10 miles is a bigger enjoy than 6 miles.”

·         Shaggy-dog stories is ridiculous and silly jokes:

Lord want to leave the room, the butler ask: “If lady want to see you, tell me where you won’t be.”

·         Banana-skin humor is an easy, primate jokes:

“Why is the letter T like an island?”

“Because it's in the middle of waTer.”

·         Elephant jokes is a stupid jokes.

“Why do elephant has feet with wrinkles?”

“To give a chance to ant.”

·         Knock-knock jokes is jokes with the same start. Usual they have start “knock-knock”:

“Knock-knock”

“Who’s there?”

“Harry”.

“Harry who?”

“Hurry up and let me in.”

·         Nonsense is an absurd jokes.

English stay at home, but the wall become to damage and “Bentley” go to room. The first English man ask: “Where is sir so a hurry?”

“To Manchester, sir.”

“You'd be closer through the kitchen."

·         Wit is bold jokes. The great example is a real dialog between Show and Churchill:

“I Leave you two tickets to my premiere, you can take a friend with you if you have one." – say Show.

“I can't come to the first premiere. I will come to the second, if you have it." – answer Churchill.

·         Practical jokes is a prank.

But don’t confuse varieties of humor with the means of expression. There are many English jokes with plays if words.

The teacher to a student: “Conjugate the verb 'to walk' in the Simple Present/”

The student: “I walk. You walk...”

The teacher interrupts him: “Quicker please!”

The student: “I run. You run...”

It’s an easy example, but often jokes with puns (plays of words) are so difficult to translate and a translator need a lot of time to make a joke with same puns in his language or find the existing equivalent.

Specific of translation

The translators say that one of main part of the English humour is emotion painting. There are some national features of language, which appear only in this language. They affect on jokes and another cultural parts. It makes translation of jokes with emotion painting so hard. To make the problem not serious scientists wrote many books about translation of humoristic moments, terms, realities and so on.

I want to see the process of translation with punt, because it’s popular and hard in translate.

I start on jokes with the words with same pronunciation. It’s a phonetic punt.

“Will you tell me your name?”

“Will Knot.”

“Why not?”

If you don’t translate this joke into Russian, you can’t to see a joke at all. One asks the name of the second speaker, while he answers him. If you look at the joke in original, it is clear that the author uses same pronunciation of the name and of the verb, of surname and of “not”. It’s so hard to translate the joke and save the author’s idea, but there is equivalent in Russian:

Вызывает доцент этого грузина к доске и спрашивает:

- Как ваша фамилия?

- Горидзе.

- А зовут вас как?

- Авас.

- Меня Николай Степанович, а вас?

- Авас.

English people can’t understand Russian jokes. Because if they try to translate our joke into English the situation will be same like with a joke about Will Knot.

“You see, this hat costs only twenty dollars. Good buy!”

“Yes, good-bye, twenty dollars.”

Here are “good buy” is same with “good-bye”. To understand the joke I can write the Russian equivalent:

“Do you have any ideas about it?”

“Not yet.”

“Bye.”

The next type of puns is jokes with words which possess a lot of meanings:

“Who likes moving pictures?”

Most of the men step forward

“All right, you fellows carry the pictures from the basement to the attic.”

There is “moving pictures” like “film” and like “transport the pictures”. For literature translate I can write next Russian equivalent:

“Who wants to dig potatoes?”

Only few people step forward.

“Ok, the rest go by foot.”

What do my classmates think about English humour?

To understand that Russian people think about English humour I asked my classmates and other friends in Internet. They are 13-15 years old and most of them study English at school, but not everyone understand English jokes. The results show English humor is so popular between people other nations, but sometimes people don’t understand the jokes and tell them to someone.

Conclusion

Today international communication is modern. If you don’t want to communicate with people from other country you can listen to foreign words in the Internet, on TV, in mass media and so on. Often the loanword is foreign word, English word. Sometimes people borrow other lexis moments. And today man, who read a lot of, can joke on man, who read less, and the second man can don’t understand him or be hurt. But jokes are jokes. Never offence on joke, you must say joke or laugh, or just smile. English men have the talent. Say about nuances to each over, laugh on yourself and your friend, say about negatives in funny form. Humor became a part of life. With the help of humor they get rid of stress after hard-working day or distract from problems. They are proud of their humor, think humor a mean part of cultural. And you can understand this not from science work or program, you can understand this with the help of jokes.

List of literature

1.      https://iloveenglish.ru/stories/view/tymannij_anglijskij_yumor_v_detalyakh

2.      https://knowledge.allbest.ru/

3.      https://englishfull.ru/topiki/yumor-anekdoty.html

4.      https://www.scienceforum.ru/2014/767/2304

5.      https://mensby.com/life/travel/2155-english-humor