This paper's main aim is to compare Chinese humour with Western humour, although, again to narrow the field, of these two forms emphasis is placed on Cantonese as compared to English humour. There is of course common ground; but many Chinese wisecracks are not considered really funny outside China. This paper looks at an assortment of jokes, including Western and Chinese. Many are 'lowbrow.' It also looks at the everyday humour of ‘old 100 names' (, the common man). To round this study off, conclusions are arrived at. Because it concentrates on Cantonese humour it uses the Cantonese style of Romanisation rather than the more modern Pinyin.
# Introduction
The British Museum's Egyptology Department has researched the bawdy fun and games that went on in the land of the Pyramids more than 4,500 years ago.3 Many of the gags which are still portrayed in the form of stone carvings centre around ‘adult jokes,' drunkenness, vomiting and sexual exhibitionism. With language and communications intertwined with culture, these antics were very much part of the humour which developed with the environment of the times (Lexikon der Agyptologie; 1997).
Culture, the framework that provides people with their identity, includes not only language and communications but also multifarious parts of everyday life: such as dress and appearance, food and eating habits, and how people perceive and appreciate themselves in relation to the society in which they live. Culture also includes relationships, values and norms, beliefs and attitudes, work habits and practices, and the relationship between work and leisure and so on. Any of these aspects of culture, as well as entertainment and sex, can, of course, be related in some way to humour. All this is very much related to one's cultural background.
In a completely different culture in Egypt, four-and-a-half millennia ago, what has been described as 'the oldest joke in the world' is recorded on a slip of papyrus (Pharaohs thigh slapper; 1998). Translated it went something like this. How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young, attractive women wearing only nets down the Nile and invite the pharaoh to go and catch a fish. Although the
This paper's main aim is to compare Chinese humour with West- ern humour, although, again to narrow the field, of these two forms emphasis is placed on Cantonese as compared to English humour. There is of course common ground; but many Chinese wisecracks are not considered really funny outside China. This paper looks at an assort- ment of jokes, including Western and Chinese. Many are 'lowbrow.' It also looks at the everyday humour of ‘old 100 names' (, the common man). To round this study off, conclusions are arrived at. Be- cause it concentrates on Cantonese humour it uses the Cantonese style of Romanisation rather than the more modern Pinyin.
Introduction
The British Museum's Egyptology Department has researched the bawdy fun and games that went on in the land of the Pyramids more than 4,500 years ago.3 Many of the gags which are still por- trayed in the form of stone carvings centre around ‘adult jokes,' drunkenness, vomiting and sexual exhibitionism. With language and communications intertwined with culture, these antics were very much part of the humour which developed with the environment of the times (Lexikon der Agyptologie; 1997),
Culture, the framework that provides people with their identity, includes not only language and communications but also multifarious parts of everyday life: such as dress and appearance, food and eating habits, and how people perceive and appreciate themselves in relation to the society in which they live. Culture also includes relationships, values and norms, beliefs and attitudes, work habits and practices, and the relationship between work and leisure and so on. Any of these as- pects of culture, as well as entertainment and sex, can, of course, be related in some way to humour. All this is very much related to one's cultural background.
In a completely different culture in Egypt, four-and-a-half millen- nia ago, what has been described as 'the oldest joke in the world' is recorded on a slip of papyrus (Pharaohs thigh slapper;1998). Trans- lated it went something like this. How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young, attractive women wearing only nets down the Nile and invite the pharaoh to go and catch a fish. Although the
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