A solid 30% of posts in my feed are German memes. I don’t understand the language, but I love the memes that I can’t read.
one of my fav light bulb jokes…
how many germans does it take to change a lightbulb?
one because they are efficient and without humor.
Just one? You underestimate german bureaucracy, Freundchen.
Yeah, funny story:
I work for the government and once during an inspection they noticed that a light on the roof our building needed to be replaced.
What should be a 5 minute task took many months. Why? Safety rules state that only roofers are allowed to enter the roof, but only electricians are allowed to work on anything that has to do with electricity which includes changing a light bulb. So we had to wait a couple of months for one of the electricians to get certified as a person that can enter the roof.
Last winter, in order to protect the
dwindlingcompletely full strategic gas reserves, the government issued an order for all govenment-owned office buildings to limit the central heating to no more than 19° C because that seemed to be the most pointlessly bureaucratic solution at the time.This included buildings that don’t even use gas for heating. Remote heat? Geothermal heat? Free waste heat that you have to actively vent to the atmosphere in order to lower the room temperature? Yep, all required to not exceed 19° C. The building I worked in at the time (for a company that rented some excess floor space) actually wasted energy adhering to this well thought-out rule.
So yeah, I’d say that in order to change a lightbulb you need at least 1000 Germans. You need both chambers of parliament to create and pass a new ordinance that applies specifically to this lightbulb (and several other contexts it has no business applying to but does because it’s too vaguely worded). Then you need at least three different expert panels to advise the government, regulatory agencies to make sure the ordinance is adhered to, licensed trainers to make sure the people executing the job are formally certified to do so… Actually, we might have to get the European Parliament involved; the new ordinance might benefit from being propoted to a European standard.
I’ll get back to you about this in about three to five years; we need to get this figured out.
In all seriousness, the notion that Germans lack humor stems from the times when English and American people last got in contact with Germans in larger numbers: In and after WW2. Allied propaganda did paint the Germans as humorless (because they can’t be totally evil if they still have humor), and after the war, living in Germany was not exactly fun.
In reality, Germans have a lot of humor, its style being similar to the British, but a lot of it is hard to translate or is based on experiences that non-Germans don’t share, like old German TV shows.
Ha ha ja just the other day Hanz made a funny joke he was going to arrive at 13:00 for his 13:00 meeting. We all laughed so hard. Naturlich he was perfectly on time arriving at 12:45, but we still laugh about it. When the meeting started he mentioned it and everyone was laughing and laughing for a good 30 sekunden or even a minute.
That Hanz, such a jokester. And people say the German have no humor, ha that is a joke!
Hahahaha I can’t stop laughing. These Germans!
I think the stereotype also comes from Germans often not catching onto sarcasm in English
Why should we? It’s inefficient. ;-)
Which is a pitfall for anyone conversing in a language that isn’t their first, I’d say.
It can be, but 90% of the people I interact with are non-native English speakers and it definitely feels a bit more common for Germans fluent in English to be bad at getting jokes.
Happens with americans too… they seem to completely miss sarcasm sometimes. Humour is very cultural (and often plays into things a native of the country would know but someone outside sometimes wouldn’t).
That isn’t what I said though, which is that specifically I notice it with Germans.
Thanks for reminding me I could use Google Lens to translate the German Memes.
According to that this joke goes: My Dad asked me if I have a favorite fruit. I told him “Papa, ja!” Literally “dad, yes!” But also pun for “papaya,” a tropical fruit.
A+, good joke and not too bad to translate.
This joke is bananas
I have no idea what’s going on here, but I’m just imagining this is what happens after the 2nd frame:
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It does annoy me that the Devs built in a system to let you set languages but everyone just sets it to ‘duhhhhh I don’t know what language I’m speaking?!’
But yeah I do like looking at the silly German words on pictures
It would probably get used more if there was some way to set a default for your own posts.
A handful of months ago, I tried to actively use that post/comment language selector. However I ended up giving up because for some reason, only English is accepted. The other choices just resulted in the loading ring spinning forever and ever and my comment/post never being coming through.
maybe the community you were trying to post to has some kind of restriction regarding that setting? I’m not sure why someone would do that and whether it’s even possible in the first place but I know the UI is not reporting errors to the users in a lot of places. I also remember playing with that setting a bit and realizing it’s more of a nuisance than actually useful.
My guess at that time is that it was an instance setting or something. That instances have a list of languages it supports. It makes sense given the admins have to be able to read and understand the posts in order to do their job responding to reports and whatnot.
But then again this was mid-June, there’s a lot of things happening, and I didn’t really explore the issue further, hoping that it’d be fixed eventually (once the more urgent issues got addressed).
I actually set-up my account to have a shortlist of languages to use (English, my native language, and a few languages I dabble on).
Come to think of it, I only see the language setting in the desktop/web interface. The mobile app that I am using doesn’t have it.
Ah, it being an instance setting makes more sense, I agree.
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Ein Ältererkulinarischeberufseinwanderer?
… who should not forget his Mehrlagensichtfensterklotzbodenbeutel full of his stuff (yes, it’s a real word here, it’s a large bag, mostly filled with cookies at the store)
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Is it hard to get citizenship? Can’t you just live there with some sort of visa?
Memes are ein serious matter. There is nothing to laugh about. Sprich Deutsch
Du
Uhren
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thats why I prefer French.
all the mêmes are the same.
Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
Bruder muss los
I’m dutch, I just enjoy our neighbors
How do you love something you don’t understand!
Tell us you’ve never been married without telling us you’ve never been married.
They said love, not loathe.
I love animals even though I can’t understand them 🤷🏻♂️
So you can’t understand how animals work and what is the point of them?
We have a frequent flyer patient at our hospital who has aphasia, a brain condition which causes nonsense words to come out instead of what the person was intending to say.
We have a NO idea what this person is saying, but his tone of voice and delivery are completely normal even though the content of the words are meaningless. So I can confirm, this guy cracks jokes and is hilarious (he laughs at his own jokes and you can’t help but laugh with him.)
The German memes feel similar. I don’t understand the words, but the intent is clear enough for me to enjoy seeing them.
Let’s hope we’ll soon find the cure for the brain condition that makes people speak German 😔🙏
When i was in university, a now fairly famous german comedian did a set. He comes on stage looking stern and unamused and tells us the comedy is starting now as he begins a timer on a stopwatch.
His first joke proper was "some people say we getmans dont have a sense of humour… well i dont think that’s very funny. "
I knew i was going to love that set immediately.
How do I get these German memes?
Subscribe to ich_iel@feddit.de - it’s the German me_irl.
Is that what it means? I love trying to decipher those memes
Ich = me
iel = im echten Leben = in real lifeDoesn’t im means ‘in the’?
“im” is often used as an abbreviation of “in dem” which is the direct translation of “in the/this” but it is also used as an abbreviation of “in einem” which directly translates to “in a” and somtimes “im” is just translated as “in”
Let’s take “Der Saft ist im Glas” as an example.
If you are trying to say that it is in a specific glass that you could point to, you would use “in dem”. If you are just talking about the general method of storing juice you would either use “im” or to be more precise “in einem”. Using “in einem” tells you that it is in a glass but the actual glass isn’t really specified or relevant right now.
“Der Saft ist in einem Glas” is basically the same as “Der Saft ist im Glas”. But it is very different from “Der Saft ist in dem Glas” which is also basically the same as “Der Saft ist im Glas”.
To translate these:
“Der Saft ist in einem Glas” => “The juice is in a glass”
“Der Saft ist in dem Glas” => “The juice is in the/this glass”
“Der Saft ist im Glas” => “The juice is in the/this glass” or “The juice is in a glass”As a bonus:
“Das passiert im echten Leben” => “That’s happening in real life”
Always fun to think about the weirdness of my mother tongue :)
Edit: These abbreviations are mostly used when the context already makes it clear which it is going to mean. Otherwise they are just confusing.
Perfect! Thanks 😄
I keep clicking on those memes and laughing, and then having no idea why it was funny in the first place.
Hold on. Humor? Or memes? Which of he two is it?
even Einstein cracks jokes
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