Things you always wanted to know the answer to [Vol. 2]

[RobinBanks]

Einion Yrth said:

Finlandia said:

SpeckledJim said:

RobinBanks said:

Pesty said:

Do other languages lend themselves to puns, play on word etc etc.

Or is it something only English speaking countries do.

English certainly does more than other languages I know but German does to a degree too.

I'd think they all do to a degree, but English is particularly good for it, as we re-use words and homonyms so often, and there are literally more words than other languages, so the chances of a match occur more often.

Finnish is as made for puns and playing on words and the general sense of humour is very much like that in the UK.

A German one, cringeworthy but a genuine play on words;


Warum können kleine Kinder fliegen, nach sie viel gestohlen haben?
Sie sind Hübschräuber.

I'd agree with SpeckledJim. We also don't have the certain structure that other languages do like specific verb and noun endings. Any word can follow any spelling or pronunciation convention. For instance it can't really occur in Russian because it's difficult for words to sound alike (although some do but I can't think of many you can make a pun from).

And EinionYrth - that's awful but I did laugh slightly. A prominent German one (which is pointless and unfunny) is the use of 'Schwein' in place of 'sein' in the song Deutschland by Die Prinzen.


Also I'm editing this to add that a lot of Russian pun humour I've found is based on things like mishearing English for Russian in songs and media.

[lord trumpton]

Why are pyjama bottoms always too short in length?

[Finlandia]

RobinBanks said:

Einion Yrth said:

Finlandia said:

SpeckledJim said:

RobinBanks said:

Pesty said:

Do other languages lend themselves to puns, play on word etc etc.

Or is it something only English speaking countries do.

English certainly does more than other languages I know but German does to a degree too.

I'd think they all do to a degree, but English is particularly good for it, as we re-use words and homonyms so often, and there are literally more words than other languages, so the chances of a match occur more often.

Finnish is as made for puns and playing on words and the general sense of humour is very much like that in the UK.

A German one, cringeworthy but a genuine play on words;


Warum können kleine Kinder fliegen, nach sie viel gestohlen haben?
Sie sind Hübschräuber.

I'd agree with SpeckledJim. We also don't have the certain structure that other languages do like specific verb and noun endings. Any word can follow any spelling or pronunciation convention. For instance it can't really occur in Russian because it's difficult for words to sound alike (although some do but I can't think of many you can make a pun from).

And EinionYrth - that's awful but I did laugh slightly. A prominent German one (which is pointless and unfunny) is the use of 'Schwein' in place of 'sein' in the song Deutschland by Die Prinzen.


Also I'm editing this to add that a lot of Russian pun humour I've found is based on things like mishearing English for Russian in songs and media.

Just remembered a motoring pun joke in Finnish. Back in the late 80's when Fiat was breaking new ground in Finland, there was this ad where it was hinted that the Fiat logo was a claw mark of a bear, the five diagonal lines. The ad said, 'Fiat, petojen sukua', to which someone clever added 'Susi jo syntyessään'.
Fiat, family of the beasts, 'a wolf from birth' but it can also mean 'a lemon already from the factory'.

[MissChief]

lord trumpton said:

Why are pyjama bottoms always too short in length?

Because they're usually cotton and if you dry cotton too quickly it shrinks. Let it air dry, not in the tumble dryer or actually on a radiator and they're less likely to shrink.

[VladD]

singlecoil said:

It's a very weak argument though, due to the high strength/low weight requirements of the material.

If you were to make bricks that were weightless at ground level, say lightweight carbon fibre filled with helium, couldn't they be used to construct a tower high enough in theory? Obviously you'd have problems with high winds at altitude, but in simple terms it should be possible, or have I missed something very obvious.

[MissChief]

Helium atoms are so small they more or less leak through everything eventually, especially bricks.

[knitware]

During an F1 race, when the car corners at high speed, why don't the tyres make a squealing sound?

[SpeckledJim]

VladD said:

If you were to make bricks that were weightless at ground level, say lightweight carbon fibre filled with helium, couldn't they be used to construct a tower high enough in theory? Obviously you'd have problems with high winds at altitude, but in simple terms it should be possible, or have I missed something very obvious.

I suppose that tower might be weightless, but the purpose you'd be putting it to (lifting stuff into space) would mean it'd have to be strong enough for all that lifting gubbins, as well as the payload itself.

[SpeckledJim]

knitware said:

During an F1 race, when the car corners at high speed, why don't the tyres make a squealing sound?

Because they aren't sliding (very much).

[gwm]

lord trumpton said:

Why are pyjama bottoms always too short in length?

Because you are too tall?

knitware said:

During an F1 race, when the car corners at high speed, why don't the tyres make a squealing sound?

You did hear it a bit in the early season races, before they put the trumpets on the exhausts.

[Ayahuasca]

Why does a disproportionate amount of amateur pron contain Christmas decorations in the background?

[SpeckledJim]

Ayahuasca said:

Why does a disproportionate amount of amateur pron contain Christmas decorations in the background?

Niche, but harmless enough, I suppose.

Unless you're the poor soul sticking a spiky tree up their fundament.

[Vipers]

OpulentBob said:

How the fkity boo can a woman get through an entire toilet roll in a day? Is she eating it or something?!

A Vindaloo and 6 pints of Guinness will do it

[lord trumpton]

MissChief said:

lord trumpton said:

Why are pyjama bottoms always too short in length?

Because they're usually cotton and if you dry cotton too quickly it shrinks. Let it air dry, not in the tumble dryer or actually on a radiator and they're less likely to shrink.

Thanks - I'll tell the wife

[ATTAK Z]

lord trumpton said:

MissChief said:

lord trumpton said:

Why are pyjama bottoms always too short in length?

Because they're usually cotton and if you dry cotton too quickly it shrinks. Let it air dry, not in the tumble dryer or actually on a radiator and they're less likely to shrink.

Thanks - I'll tell the wife

Shirley you should tell the Housekeeper rather than your good lady ?

[lord trumpton]

ATTAK Z said:

lord trumpton said:

MissChief said:

lord trumpton said:

Why are pyjama bottoms always too short in length?

Because they're usually cotton and if you dry cotton too quickly it shrinks. Let it air dry, not in the tumble dryer or actually on a radiator and they're less likely to shrink.

Thanks - I'll tell the wife

Shirley you should tell the Housekeeper rather than your good lady ?

Same person

[glazbagun]

If you were to take a 4wd 200HP car with 50/50 mass distribution , then disable one axle, would it be faster as a FWD or RWD car around a circuit/point-to-point?

[scarble]

SpeckledJim said:

I suppose that tower might be weightless, but the purpose you'd be putting it to (lifting stuff into space) would mean it'd have to be strong enough for all that lifting gubbins, as well as the payload itself.

and I believe that very few things are even theoretically possible of that, iirc there was some talk that carbon nanotubes might somehow make it possible a while back, but even then it's hardly economically viable and this is before you take into account wind and maybe Earthquakes and the fact it's a mahoosive cantilever so even without any mass its self, anything behind held at the top might even have relative inertia to the rotation of the Earth and/or any other loads at the space end would cause all sorts of bendyness.
Perhaps a single crystal diamond, grown in a gigantic space pressy thing of some description would be suitable, but again, it'd probably never pay for its self. Look at how the M6 toll and Eurotunnel worked out, apply that to a giant space diamond.

Edited by scarble on Wednesday 26th November 08:20

[RenesisEvo]

glazbagun said:

If you were to take a 4wd 200HP car with 50/50 mass distribution , then disable one axle, would it be faster as a FWD or RWD car around a circuit/point-to-point?

I'm leaning towards RWD, but it will be marginal, and requires a lot of assumptions (like equal cornering stiffness and neglecting differences in drivetrain losses). With 200hp, traction will be a minor issue when FWD unless it's got a decent front LSD or big grippy tyres. With RWD the weight transfer under acceleration is always towards the axle applying power, so you will have a traction advantage (whereas FWD the weight transfer unloads it, reducing the ability to deploy power). With 200hp that won't be an enormous advantage for the RWD car; add more power and it will increasingly become one. It depends on the nature of the circuit/road; if there are few/no traction-limited areas exiting corners (and no standing starts) then both will perform similarly - consider the extreme case of a flying lap around the Millbrook bowl; you can expect the same laptime for both; but this won't be the case around Cadwell Park. Most likely it would come down to what the driver was more capable of extracting performance from.

If you take a 4WD car and simply remove some propshafts, the suspension will not be optimised for either scenario, but could well be biased towards one of them, which would influence the result. Which ends up better will depend entirely on what the starting point is, e.g. take an Audi TT quattro and you could expect it to behave better when FWD; a BMW 3 series xDrive will likely be better when RWD.

[SpeckledJim]

scarble said:

Look at how the M6 toll and Eurotunnel worked out, apply that to a giant space diamond.

Edited by scarble on Wednesday 26th November 08:20

This is the kind of forensic intellect that we need so much more of. Vote scarble.

Permission for giant space diamond: Denied. Meeting over. Put that biscuit back.