My son Silas is visiting for ten days, and in the evenings we occasionally watch online comedy. I introduced Silas to Ismo, a Finnish comic who has moved to the U.S., has been learning English, and marvels at the incoherencies and weirdnesses of the English language.
Ismo presents himself as slow. He grunts, scratches his head. In reality he studied physics at university and dropped out to do stand-up.
In this particular routine, he talks about the word “ass,” which he jokingly calls the most complicated word in the English language. (He delivered part of this sketch on Conan O’Brien’s show, and a clip of it got 700 million views in two days.)
Of course ass means butt, as Ismo points out. However, it’s more than the butt—it’s also the entire body, as in “Get your ass over here.” That means “Come over here.” Bring your whole self.
If you’re in a car, the word ass includes the car, as in “Get your ass out of here.”
But “ass” can be divided. If someone is half-ass, they’re not doing a job properly. Then there’s a piece of ass, which means good-looking.
As Ismo jokes, my ass does not mean my butt. It means no. What you just said is not true.
x: “Sean works hard.”
y: “Sean works hard my ass.”
In other words, Sean is a lazy ass. Here the word ass means nothing. Sean is simply lazy.
I laughed at Ismo until I couldn’t catch my breath.
Word-Play
The turn of a single joke is usually a moment when a word or phrase is used in an unexpected way. In the same way, stand-up comedy often relies on word-play and the nuance of language for humor. George Carlin was a master at it. “How is it possible to have a civil war?” he said. And, “Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.”
English is Difficult
English is not Ismo’s first language, which is apparent the minute he speaks. So he wins the audience’s sympathy right away. We think, “Poor guy, having to learn English. What a crackup of a language.”
All those silent letters.
All the words spelled alike but different in meaning. (homographs)
All the words that sound alike but different in meaning. (homophones)
All those verb phrases with the same verb but vastly different meanings. Pick up. Pick on. Pick up on. Pick over. Pick through. Pick out. Pick apart.
All the weird pronunciations, such as -gh is sometimes pronounced as -f, as in enough.
All the discrepancies—the -gh in enough is not pronounced like the -gh in although.
(I was struck by another idea. Imagine writing comic sketches in your native language, then traveling abroad to deliver. Much of it would just not translate.
For Writing
Word-play is what we writers are doing. We’re trying to delight, surprise, and entertain people with the ways we discover nuance, double entendre, rhyme, malapropisms, puns, and other forms of craft.
We do it to tickle the funny bone.
Tickle me.
Thank you…laughed my tired ass off reading this.
Enjoy your visit with Silas! It sounds like you are having a delightful time. This put a smile on my face this morning!