Is this funny?
July 2, 2008 9 Comments
I was in a meeting at work the other day. It was about financial forecasts, monthly revenue and other items that make me wonder how I got from digging in the dirt for old stuff to a conference room with a spreadsheet in front of me. So I was, of course, looking for a moment of lightheartedness.
One of my co-workers is a lovely lady from India. She is as sweet as apple pie and her words of assurance are like verbal Prozac at the end of each month when I’m trying to track down a missing $100K in our profit margin. I simply adore her. What is even more endearing is her heavily accented English. She speaks English very well with one little glitch: all her V’s come out as W’s. I mostly just grin when I hear it. She’ll say something like, “There was a $2300 wariance in our expense bucket last month.” Insert grin.
The other day though, she really got me. We were asking her why she was out of the office the previous Friday and she said, “I had to pick up my child because he was womiting at the daycare.”
Tears filled my eyes. I bit my lip. I stifled a chuckle.
Was that funny, or is it just me?
I asked my boss later if he heard it and apparently it went right through his ears without registering in his brain. I told my wife about it when I got home and then spent 10 minutes trying out other V-words that would be funnier with a W in front. Had my kids not been away at camp they would have found this game hilarious and participated with glee. My wife’s only response was, “There’s something wrong with you.”
Don’t forget “Excuse me, where are your nuclear wessels?”
one of didion’s faworite books is dr. seuss’s abc: an amazing alphabet book.
MY faworite part is:
“big “w”, little “w” … what begins with “w”? werna wera win and her wiolet wiolin!”
of course, she probably goes home every night and pokes fun at southern drawls.
(i get funny looks in new york state with some of california-isms.)
cheers!
I have no doubt. Regional accents are an endless source of hilariousness. I can only imagine how it is from country to country.
Dr. Seuss never gets old, does it?
lordy, NEVER!!!!
N-E-V-E-R!
my favorites — from my childhood — are …
ten apples up on top! and put me in the zoo …
when we read them to d-man, i have a visceral buzzing, remembering how happy i was reading them when i was young.
super cool.
I guess it has a lot to do with the context.
The area I live in is very diverse. It’s amazing to me that those from some countries (like India) speak more grammatically correct than many born and raised here while those from other countries (I’m not going to point fingers here) still make the same grammatical errors 15 or 20 years after arriving.
I hope that if I was immersed in another language I’d learn and correct myself as I went along based on how those around me were using it.
I think in this context it was hilarious. This lady has very good grammar and is better than about 75% of my coworkers. I don’t correct her on the little stuff because it’s so minor.
Kudos to the guy who made the obvious Star Trek reference
. And no, PC, I don’t think you’re crazy, I would’ve had a tough time stifling the chuckle too.