What makes germans laugh

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Change it here DW. COM has chosen English as your language setting. COM in 30 languages. Deutsche Welle. Audiotrainer Deutschtrainer Die Bienenretter. Are Germans really a nation of scowling sourpusses? So why are they hosting a humor conference? There's plenty to laugh about in Germany. Harald Schmidt, Germany's best-known comedian.

They place a bet on whose house will be finished first. An American, a German and someone from Tyrol in Austria are sitting in a ski hut. The Tyrol region in western Austria is an extremely popular holiday destination for Germans for its skiing and hiking season. There is no real industry in the area aside from tourism.

The basic structure is:. Example: All the children are playing with knives except for Ted who is now dead. First example: Two muffins are next to each other baking in the oven. Second example: Two guys are walking over a bridge.

One falls in the water, the other is called Helmut. The point of these jokes is to fit as much filthy nonsense into an otherwise anodyne rhyming couplet. Nimmt der Ochse ein Kondom, lacht der Kuhstall voller Hohn! By wooing the audience for laughs with physical gestures rather than words, the sketch managed to tap into a specifically German distrust of language — the same mindset that had made it the natural home of silent cinema in the s.

Spike Milligan famously said that "the German sense of humour is no laughing matter", and it will take time to shift that cliche: a poll last year revealed the Germans are still considered the unfunniest nation in the world.

Of course, it's not as simple as that: it's just that German comedy speaks its own language. Even today, most comedy in Germany is generally more physical and knockabout than in Britain, though this is not to say that it is all as crude and basic as a Benny Hill sketch. I was reared on a wide range of comic acts: at one end of the spectrum was Otto Waalkes, a modern version of the circus clown, with oversized dungarees, a bald pate, a trademark bunny-hop walk and goofy laughter.

And yet the core of Loriot's act was essentially physical. One of the most popular Loriot sketches is reminiscent of Dinner for One: a couple are at a table in a restaurant, eating soup; the man noticeably nervous. As he wipes his mouth with his napkin, a noodle gets stuck on his chin.

The woman tries to point this out, but the man interrupts her. For the rest of the sketch, the rogue noodle travels from his chin to his finger to his forehead to his earlobe. The comic effect is heightened by the fact that the man is trying to have a serious conversation about their relationship, but the popularity of the sketch is essentially all down to the noodle.

German humour's reliance on the physical is not just apparent on television, but also in the way Germans act on a day-to-day basis. After or before they have made a joke, many Germans will make a physical gesture to signpost their intention: sometimes just an expressively raised eyebrow, sometimes something more emphatic. Not for nothing are jokes also known as Schenkelklopfer , "thigh-slappers". The decorum of English joking couldn't be more different.

When I first moved to London in , and the boys at my school made jokes, there was nothing in their body language to demonstrate it — no funny voice, no grimacing, no slapping of thighs. Particularly in my first year, I was caught out innumerable times by this. There was the vocabulary test that my classmates had warned me about that never happened, the boy who said his father was the prime minister who wasn't, the teacher who said he had been drafted into the Oxford and Cambridge boat race at the last minute who hadn't.

They had all told blatant lies without raising an eyebrow. Deadpan joke-telling seemed to come from the same mentality as the British art of understatement: the point was that you would by all means avoid making an outward show of what was going on inside your head. Once the Germans started laughing again, it was mostly self-deprecating and gallows humor.

The German cultural conscious is so deeply linked to the tragedies of past, and it is clearly represented in their comedies. So yes, despite common myth, Germans DO laugh! However, it might be hard for Americans to know when or why.

So, the next time you hear someone discussing the cold Berliner or the curt, serious Bavarian, let them know that Germans are actually a very funny and humorous bunch, they are just hard to understand!