Spanish Jokes / Recent Jokes
One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following "history" of the world from certfiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eighth grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.
The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked "Am I my more...
From the rehu-l list where it had been posted from the Whim list.
From "American Demographics" magazine:
Here's a look at how shrewd American business people translate their slogans into foreign languages:
When Braniff translated a slogan touting its upholstery, "Fly in leather," it came out in Spanish as "Fly naked."
Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose," into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea."
Chicken magnate Frank Perdue's line, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken," sounds much more interesting in Spanish: "It takes a sexually stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate."
When Vicks first introduced its cough drops on the German market, they were chagrined to learn that the German pronunciation of "v" is f - which makes "Vicks" in German the phonetic equivalent of "sexual penetration."
Not to be outdone, Puffs tissues tried more...
These are the nominees for the Chevy Nova Award. This is given in honor of the GM's fiasco in trying to market this car in Central and South America. "No va" means, in Spanish, "No go."1. The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read "Are you lactating?"2. Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious adult magazine.3. An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of "I saw the Pope" (el Papa), the shirts read "I Saw the Potato" (la papa).4. Pepsi's "Come Alive With the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Grave" in Chinese.5. The Coca-Cola name in China was first read as "Kekoukela", meaning "Bite the wax tadpole" more...
There were three boys all in third grade: an Asian boy, a Spanish boy and a redneck. They were trying to think of games to play at recess when the Asian boy got an idea. "I know," he said, "we can play, Who's Got the Biggest Pee Pee". "How do you play that?" asked the redneck. "It's easy'' said the Spanish boy, "we can play it next recess." So when recess time came, the three boys went outside. "Alright," said the Spanish boy, "Lets play." The Asian boy explained that all you have to do is pull down your pants and whoever has the biggest pee pee is the winner. And so the Asian boy pulled down his pants and the other two boys were impressed. Then the Spanish boy pulled down his pants. His pee pee was about the same size as the Asian boy's. As the redneck boy pulled his pants down, the other two boys stared in awe. "You win for sure," they both said. Later that day the redneck boy went home and his mother more...
There was this Russian guy, this Spanish guy and this Korean guy all in the same ESL class. The teacher told them to make a sentence using the word' hostess' for homework. So the next day the Russian guy goes "Oh I have a good sentence. The hostess was very courteous." And the teacher said "Wow that was really good!" The Spanish guy goes, "Oh I have a better sentence. My mother is a good hostess when others come over." Then the teacher said, "Wow that was really good!" Finally the Korean guy goes, "I have the best sentence. When my mother answers the phone, she says hostess?"
I bought a self-learning record to learn Spanish. I turned it on and went to sleep; the record got stuck. The next day I could only stutter in Spanish.
International Marketing - Actual Accounts Cracking an international market is a goal of most growing corporations. It shouldn't be that hard, yet even the big multi-nationals run into trouble because of language and cultural differences. For example... The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax" depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le," which can be loosely translated as "happiness in the mouth." In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead." Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan "finger-lickin' good" came out as "eat more...