Or so sayeth the common stereotype…
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- The German language doesn’t work well with pun based humour. This is the kind of humour English speakers are used to.
- They do but you need to be able to speak German to understand the jokes they’re making. Understandably, it’s hard to be funny in a second language.
- IME German humour is often incredibly dry, deadpan or even anti-humour. In the past I’ve experienced Germans making jokes, and British people thinking they were being deadly serious. Eg. “An Irishman, a German and a Brit walk into a bar. They order beer.” Expressionless face - shit example, but you get the idea.
On point 1: I’ve had enough German puns explained to my non-German speaking ass to know they are exceptional at pun based humor. The problem is, puns only work in the language they were developed in. When you translate them to other languages, the words are different so the wordplay disappears.
In my experience, English humour is also dry, sarcastic and/or satirical, it seems to be American humour that doesn’t pick up on the dry jokes.
But yeah, also the language barrier hits hard.
Robin Williams had an interesting answer to the question.
