Here are some jokes playing with the language. See if you can understand the answers. If not, at the end you have the explanations.
1- Did you hear about the blind carpenter who picked up his hammer and saw?
2- Did you hear about the deaf shepherd who gathered his flock and heard?
3- Q: What does a ghost eat for dessert?
A: I scream.
4- The teacher says: Today, we're going to talk about the tenses. Now, if I say "I am beautiful," which tense is it?
The student says: Obviously it's the past tense.
5- A: Hey, man! Please call me a taxi.
B: Yes, sir. You are a taxi.
6- Q: Why is the number six afraid?
A: Because seven eight nine
7- Did you hear about the guy that lost his left arm and leg in a car crash?
He's all right now.
8- What did the fish say when he hit a concrete wall?
"Dam".
9- A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired.
10- I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger. Then it hit me.
1-
BLIND= A blind person is someone who can’t see.
HAMMER= A tool used by carpenters to hit nails.
SAW= A tool used by carpenters to cut wood.
The pun of this joke is the word SAW, it is a tool and it is also the past tense of the verb “to see”, so we can read the sentence with two different meanings.
2-
DEAF= A deaf person is someone who can’t hear.
SHEPHERD= A person who takes care of sheep and walks them around in the country.
GATHER= Bring together.
FLOCK= A group of sheep.
HEARD= This is the pun of the joke, because HEARD is the past tense of the verb “to hear”, but it sounds the same as HERD, which is a group of animals of the same kind that go together (in this case, a flock of sheep), so again, you can listen to the joke and give two different meanings to the last sentence.
3-
I SCREAM means “I shout”. People scream when they are in terror (very afraid), so if you see a ghost (the spirit of a dead person) you scream. But the pronunciation of I SCREAM is the same as ICE-CREAM.
4-
THE PAST TENSE of the verb “to be” is “I was, you were, etc”. The sentence “I am beautiful” is present tense, but in this joke the teacher must be very ugly, so if she says “I am beautiful” it has to be a “past tense” (she was beautiful), because that sentence would be wrong in the present.
5-
TO CALL A TAXI means to make a motion for a taxi to stop, or to phone a taxi. But the verb TO CALL also means to say something to someone, so “
he called me stupid” means “
he said: you are stupid”.
6-
If you pronounce 7 8 9, it sounds the same as SEVEN ATE NINE (
ate is the past tense of “to eat”), so the number 6 doesn’t want to be eaten by 7, that’s why it is afraid!
7-
GUY (coll. AmE)= man.
CAR CRASH= A car accident.
HE’S ALL RIGHT means “he’s ok”, but if we think of its literal meaning, “he’s all right” means “all of his body is
right, because the
left part of his body was destroyed in the accident”.
8-
A DAM is a big concrete wall, an artificial barrier built to stop a river and make an artificial lake (a reservoir). If a fish in a river hits a concrete wall, it probably is a dam, so the fish identification is correct.
But the word DAM sounds the same as the exclamation DAMN! which is a curse word (a bad word children shouldn’t say) that people say when something goes wrong and they don’t like it, used to express anger, irritation, contempt, or disappointment. So when the fish hit the wall and hurt itself, it exclaimed “damn!”
9-
ON ITS OWN means “alone” or “without help”. The pun here is the phrase “TWO TIRED”. If a person is TOO TIRED they can’t stand, they have to sit down. A bicycle doesn’t get tired, but it can’t stand alone because it has only two wheels (a car has 4 wheels and it can stand). The wheels of a bicycle have a metallic ring and a rubber thing around it filled with air. That rubber part is called a TYRE, so a bicycle has TWO TYRES, that is, two wheels. And we can build an adjective using this construction:
NUMBER + NOUN + -ED
So we can say:
-
a one-eyed man (a man with just one eye).
-
a three-legged dog (a dog with only three legs).
-
a six-headed monster (a monster with three heads).
And, of course, a bicycle is A TWO-TYRED BICYCLE because it has two tyres.
10-
TO WONDER= To be curious about something. You don’t know it but you want to know and think about it.
BASEBALL= The game is “baseball”, but the ball we use in that game is also called a “baseball”. We can also talk about a football (the ball we use to play football), etc.
HIT= past participle of the verb “to hit” (hit-hit-hit), to impact, to strike.
If someone hits a baseball and the ball comes right to you, you see it getting bigger, because as it is nearer you see it bigger. So this ball was going to hit the man (or woman) and he didn’t know what was happening (he was wondering). Then, the ball finally hit him.
The pun here is the expression IT HIT ME, which means “after thinking about something I couldn’t understand, I finally found the explanation and could understand him”. So here we’ve got both meanings at the same time: when the ball hit him he could understand why the ball was getting bigger.
http://www.multimedia-english.com/ht...u-get-it-2.htm