Friday 17 June 2011

Learning Humour

I just realized what my biggest challenge is when living here in Germany. Language? Occasionally a problem, but no. Homesickness? Of course I have it, but no. The biggest problem is, readers, that I am completely incapable of being funny in German.

To be able to understand this, readers, I must present myself as a cake. A personality-cake. The cake that is me consists of 10 pieces. I suppose the type of cake is irrelevant, but let's say I'm a chocolate cake. The deal is that normally 8 of 10 pieces of the Trolldis-cake is humour. 8 of 10, that is like 80%! So this means that only 20% consist the rest of my personality, so you know, kindness, intelligence (we're only talking cake-crumbles in this field, but I guess it's there), and so on. Bottom line 80% of the Trolldis cake is humour, 20% the rest. So most of Trolldis is a lump of humour. Here's the problem: Turns out you don't only have to learn the language, and how the German people are put together, you also have to learn humour. Clearly I am completely incapable of being funny when talking German. It's not like I don't try, it's just that every try ends in a massive fail.

Mostly I learnt my lack of German humour when i.e writing someone. I often ask my boyfriend to look through, makes me sure I'm not sending something braindead to people. And more than once I got the comment "Ehm.. Yeah, well.. We don't say that in German". "That's not funny in German", "I don't get that". "Nobody will get that" - at least he kinda prevented me from saying something really stupid, so it did not seem like the 80% lacking was indeed a reduction of the brains.

At least the Germans can laugh when I fuck up in German, and make embarrassing mistakes. For example, replacing "Krawatte" (tie) with "Karotte" (carrot), or saying "Waffelstillstand" when I wanted to say "Waffenstillstand" (sorry, I have no good translation, so I guess this one is just for the Germans). Of course, I disgrace myself like this all the time, but that's not the kind of humour I mean here.

The biggest problem, when the 80% humour cannot be shown inside Germany, only 20% of my personality is left to be shown, and I suppose you can all imagine what this means: Not only do Germans see a Trolldis 80% reduced, but I must appear to be the lamest personality to ever have set foot in Germany. Imagine what person you appear to be if 80% of your personality is just gone. Yes, you may feel sympathy. Thank you, readers, it is so kind.

At least I hope that it is just in German that I'm lame, maybe I just really hope this is the case, when in fact I am just getting lamer and lame with age. And the day I turn 22, my humour will drop to 0% and people run away in order to not talk to me. So my 80% goes from humour to BORING. To be honest, I prefer to believe the "lame in German" thing, that means I can at least have someone smiling at me when returning to Norway. So, readers, let me live in this hope!

Whether I am capable of being funny in English or not is up to me to decide, but that's not my biggest worry. Now I will go learn some German, and I'm not talking about vocabulary or grammar. I'm off to learn some German humour!

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