Filipino Humor

DECEMBER 7, 2007 BY AMERICANLOLA13 COMMENTS Klaus had an article last week on this topic and I had what I thought was an interesting comment to post when a brown out lost it for me. So, heres the pie, from my American perspective! I enjoy a good sense of humor, and what different cultures consider funny is a fascinating thing to think about. I do not claim to have a complete understanding of Filipino humor, but here are some things I have observed. 1. Filipinos love jokes involving a play on words especially ones that involve English and another Filipino language, or about people making funny mistakes with English. Examples: What is this? (Holding your right hand out, wiggling your fingers to the left.) Answer: Pusit (octopus). And what is this? (Holding the left hand out, wiggling the fingers to the right) Answer: Opposite. A tourist was visiting the Philippines and his hosts were pleased to give him many of the local fruits, which he really enjoyed. At the end of his stay he told his friends, Of all the bananas I have ever eaten, I like saging the best! This one is always good for a laugh! Erap, when he won the vice presidency was supposed to have declared, I told you I would win by a landscape! There are many jokes about politicians who mangle English in funny ways. Like the fellow in Agusan Sur, Manuel Dela Plaza, who didnt have a lot of English, but was a well known politician. He had a speech writer who wrote his speeches in English. One day he was addressing an assembled group of educators and began his speech,

Good morning to you all, teachers, principals and administrators. Smile at the audience from time to time. 2. There are many, many jokes involving priests, nuns, prayer and all things Catholic. Here is a joke which my friends found hilarious every time they told it, and after several repeats, I still cant find the humor in, at least not to warrant the kind of enjoyment it invoked in my friends! A man went to buy a parrot from a priest. (A lot of jokes also contain parrots) The priest told the man that it was a very religious parrot, and showed him that when you raise the right foot of the parrot, it would say the Our Father and if you lifted the left foot, it would say a grace for the meal. The man was impressed and bought the parrot from the priest. When he took it home he tried it himself. Sure enough, when he lifted the right foot, the parrot recited the Our Father, and when he lifted the left foot, it said a grace for a meal. Then he lifted both feet and the parrot shouted, Animal! (bad insult) Put me down! [uproarious laughter] Here is another: A little boy went to church and prayed, asking God to give him a bicycle, within four days, by Friday. Everyday he prayed and reminded God how many days were left. Friday came and went, and he had no bicycle. Saturday he went to the church, to the statue of Mary, put his arm around the statue and held a knife to her throat and prayed, Listen God, Ive got your mother! 3. There are a lot of jokes about handicapped people which people think are really funny. In a culture that defines and describes people by their most prominent attribute (the fat one, the dark one, the short one, the bald one, the crippled one, the harelip, the ugly one, the one with pimples, etc. I guess this is understandable. In our culture we do our best to pretend that no one is in any way different from anyone else, to the point of denial. I never thought any of these jokes were funny. One I remember was also a play on words, using the word bugtot which means hunchback and making it come out book taught in a sentence. 4. Filipinos do not use sarcasm or irony in their humor. Americans (and probably Brits) use a lot of sarcasm and irony, and it is not understood or well received here. When we

make comments like, Oh, right! Id love that! when we mean the exact opposite, it doesnt fly. Or when we say of a bad experience, Id love to do that every day of the week! it makes no sense. Sarcastic remarks come across as negative and maybe even a little mean. Jokes that have ironic or sarcastic punch lines fall flat. 5. Dirty jokes are called green jokes. People find it very amusing to compare various body parts to fruits and vegetables. Bruce mentioned that most of the jokes he told to Elenas family did not get the desired response, and gave an example of one such joke: One cannibal says: I hate my mother-in-law. The other cannibal says: Never mind, just eat the vegetables. I can think of a couple things that might have made this not seem funny. First, we use the word hate very freely, but here, people would generally not sa y that they hated a food. If the first cannibal had said, I dont like my mother-in-law, you might have gotten a laugh. The other thing is that people here do not tell mother-in-law jokes. Mothers-inlaw are serious business; called Mama and respected, even if they cause problems. So, if you had changed it to the neighbor, or a member of a disrespected minority, you would probably have had a laugh.