Saturday, June 11, 2011

Eye Candy Friday: Angelika's Addiction or The Language of Laughter

This week, a poll sampling folks from 15 countries found that Americans are considered the funniest of nationalities and the Germans are the least funny.  The Reuter's report on the poll quotes Mark Twain's saying that "a German joke is no laughing matter."  We'll, they may not make us laugh (intentionally), and it might seem that they are incapable of laughter themselves.  But there could be some exceptions.  Below is a video that has, of late, smitten and amused Angelika to no end.  I'm sharing it here to give you a wee indication of what I've been living with recently.  Every so often I hear the audio of this video wafting in from the other room joined with laughs and those "oh that's so cute" sort of sighs.  The German lady just can't seem to get enough of this.






This next video might serve as some evidence that Germans are indeed capable of eliciting laughter from others - simply by being themselves.  This news report is on a laughing club (lach club) in Germany, where there is a proscribed time and place for everything.  This video is in German.  That just makes it funnier.





Speaking of the German Language, Mark Twain's meditation on trying to learn the German tongue is entitled "The Awful German Language".
For my own purposes, I have no intention of really to speak German.  I'm just trying to hone my mimicry of any spoken moment of German I come across.  Also, my lack of knowledge and comprehension does nothing to prevent me from reciting any German text I find to Angelika.  I find this pastime enormously amusing. I believe she does too. Her amusement is manifested in a pretense of eye rolling incomprehension of  what she's just heard. 

 I will say that Angelika, being German and all, is not among the unfunniest of folks. I guess since she is also an American citizen, the balance of her national identities places her in the middle of the spectrum.....She's part of a hybrid group:  1/2 Kraut + 1/2 Yank = Krank.

I've posted a couple some recent ECF posts over on MAYKR which I didn't get around to posting here, but you can find those and all the others under the Eye Candy Friday label at MAYKR.com