CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
4.2. DIFFERENCES OF THE EXPRESSIVE MEANS OF THE PUN IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE
Apart from the common expressive means for both the English pun
nguages owns its specific ways of punning. To clarify this
. Such homophonous puns as “Seven days without a pun makes one weak” (“weak” is a homophone of “week”) or “When an actress saw her hair, she thought she'd dye” [42] (“dye” is a homophone
a lot in Tom Swifties such as the ones in the following examples:
5
and the Vietnamese one, since coming from different linguistic backgrounds, either of the two la
argument, hereafter I will present in turn the expressive means applied in the pun of either language and not in the one of the other language.
4.2.1. The expressive means used in the English pun, but not in the Vietnamese one
One of the most popular expressive means of the English pun is homophony
first strands of gray
of “die”) take a large number of the English pun. This kind of expressive means is also used
Examples 74 – 7 :
74. "There's no need for silence," Tom allowed. (“allowed” is a homophone of “aloud”) [41].
75. "I won't finish in fifth place," Tom held forth. (“forth” is a homophone of
“fourth”) [41].
As a good source of intentional ambiguity, homophones are undoubtedly great materials for joke puns. Below is one of them:
Example 76: A woman was driving her car on a narrow road. She was knitting at the same time, so she was driving very slowly.
A man came up from behind and he wanted to pass her. He opened the
ng” (the word “ngờ” and letter
words can not be found in Vietnamese. Vietnamese learners of English may find the
ophones a nice surprise.
but not of the window and yelled, "Pull over! Pull over!"
The lady yelled back, "No, it's a sweater!" [57]
The phrasal verb “pull over” and the noun “pullover” are homophones, which causes the woman’s misunderstanding and makes the tale really funny.
This kind of expressive means is, however, hardly used in the Vietnamese pun. It is because except a very limited number of letters pronounced the same as certain words such as letter l in lách = l (lờ) + ách (already mentioned) or letter ng in “Hoàng thượng không ngờ (ng) thành hoà thượng. Hoà thượng có ngờ (ng) là hoàng thượ
ng are homophones [38]), the Vietnamese language contains no words which sound the same but are written differently and have different meanings. Consequently, puns based on homophonous
abundance of English hom
Breaking polysyllabic single word forms down into smaller components is another expressive means of the English pun
Vietnamese one. Let us consider the following joke puns:
Examples 77 - 78:
77. Let’s face it: English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant or ham in hamburger, neither apple nor pine in pineapple. [57]
78. At the Electric Company: "We would be delighted if you send in your bill. However, if you don't, you will be." [57]
Eggplant, hamburger, pineapple are polysyllabic single word forms but when broken into smaller units, they give such witty explanations as 77. Similarly, delighted, when broken down, becomes
80 below will support this argument:
shown in example
“de-lighted” meaning “your lights will be down/off”.
Tom Swifties mainly employ this kind of expressive means. Examples 79 and
Examples 79 – 80:
79. "I swallowed some of the glass from that broken window," Tom said painfully (pain sounds like “pane” = window glass + full = full stomach + y) [41].
nglish punsters.
be found in the Vietnamese language where every single 80. "The cat sounds as if she's happy now she's been fed," said Tom purposefully (pur sounds like “purr” = cat noise + pose sounds like “puss”
= cat + full = full stomach + y) [41].
Applied with homonymy, homophony or sound similarity, the broken components are quite meaningful. Such way of punning based on morphology like this one is evidently a big advantage for E
However, it can not
word form is not polysyllabic.
Words of the same root and the inflectional forms of a word do not ficient expressive means of the
exist in Vietnamese, but they are used as highly ef
English pun. Let us consider the following examples:
Examples 81 – 82:
81. - What do you do for my forgetful case, doctor?
- T
, using all the original letters exactly once, is not applied n either. Although this kind of wordplay can be done in rams which can combine with the
sentence giving a funny definition uestion-answer like the one in examp
o …pay in advance for fear of your forgetting [12, p.38].
82. A speaker asked: “Did I make a moving speech?”
“Yes, everybody moved to the door.” [12, p.38]
The wit of the joke puns in the examples above definitely comes from the words of the same root forgetful and forgetting and the inflectional forms moving and moved of the verb “move”.
Anagram or rearranging letters of a word, phrase or sentence to produce a new one
in the Vietnamese pu
many languages, to create witty anag original form to make either a completed such as the one in example 8 or a pair of q
le 9 and which give humorous and/or ironic definitions or comments on the original subject such as the ones in examples 83 – 85 below is really a hard nut to crack.
Examples 83 – 85:
83. Desperation = A rope ends it [41].
84. Mother-in-law = Woman Hitler [41].
85. The Morse code =
It is especially challe anagram of a poem which
scans and rhy sely like the
Here come dots [41].
nging to compose an
mes well, paraphrasing the original remarkably clo
one in the example be nagram of the poem
“The Little Boy Such a creation
can make one am ventions.
Example 86
low, “The Tot and the Elder”, an a and the Old Man” by Shel Silverstein [41].
azed not less than other human wonderful in :
Said on."
e little old man.
Said the little boy, "I often cry."
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
"I know what you mean," said the little old man . And hereafter is
The elder replied: "O, that makes two of us."
nly you," answered gramps to the tot.
"And what's totally bad," the tiny tot told, The Little Boy and the Old Man
(By Shel Silverstein)
the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spo Said the old man, "I do that too."
The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."
"I do that too," laughed th
The old man nodded, "So do I."
"But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems Grown-ups don't pay attention to me."
[41]
the anagram poem:
The Tot and the Elder
(By Olin Foblioso & Billy Foblioso) The tiny tot went: "When I eat I mess up."
"I soil myself," went the tot with shame And the elder added: "O, I do the same."
On the tot told him: "I sob a lot."
"O, not o
"I think mom and dad don't love me at all."
While grandpa simply, pitiably smiled, then said: "O, I understand, my child." [41]
Requiring both the punster’s linguistic competence and his patience, anagram poems are worthy to be regarded as the greatest achievement gained by the fans of this pun.
Also based on arranging the letters of the alphabet are pangrams s can be made in re both humorous es in examples 87 –
mentioned earlier in 2.2.5.2, item f. Like anagrams, pangram many languages. Nevertheless, to construct pangrams that a and maximumly limit the repetition of the letters like the on
89 below is not a simple task at all. Pangrams have not had their equivalents in the Vietnamese pun yet.
Examples 87 – 89:
87. Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx. (26 letters) [53]
88. The five boxing wizards jump quickly. (31 letters) [54].
ite of sharing a lot of expressive means of the pun with Vietnamese, English still has its own ways of punning, which creates its own charac
89. Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs. (32 letters) [54]
In a word, in sp
teristics. However, this pride is also shared by the Vietnamese language, which, in its turn, also owns certain ways of punning that can not be obtained in the English one.
4.2.2. The expressive means used in the Vietnamese pun, but not in the English one
As a tonal language where word meaning is affected by the tone with which vowels are pronounced, a lot of Vietnamese joke puns are based on the tones given by the six diacritics including sắc (high rising), ngã
(creaking-rising), ngang (high level), huyền (low falling), hỏi (dipping- rising) and nặng (dropping). “Đôi mắt mơ huyền” (dreamy jet-black eyes), for instance, becomes “Đôi mắt mờ” (opaque eyes) applied with punning because in Vietnamese the word “mơ” (dreamy) becomes the word “mờ”
(opaque) when it is added with the low falling tone huyền. Vietnamese word- puzzles especially employ these tones such as the one in example 26. In fact, these tones are the biggest problem for many foreign learners of the Vietnamese language. However, it is simultaneously a fertile land to grow joke puns. The following is such a joke pun that I have ever heard of:
Singing at a wedding party, a foreigner aroused peals of laughter from the audience with his wrong pronunciation in so many Vietnamese words of the song. Getting very embarrassed, he stopped and said in Vietnamese: “Xin đừng cưới tôi”, which aroused even louder laughter because he mistook the word cưới = “marry” for cười = “laugh”. What he intended to say here was
“Xin đừng cười tôi” = “Don’t laugh at me, please”, but instead he said “Xin đừng cưới tôi” = “Don’t marry me, please”. Recognizing this mistake, he decided to correct it saying: “Xin đừng cưỡi tôi”. Needless to say what effect this statement caused because the word cưỡi means “ride”. The three words cưới, cười and cưỡi are different only in their tones but far in meaning. The complexity of Vietnamese tones proves a really useful expressive means of the pun in this language.
As Chinese was, for a prolonged period, the only medium of literature and government as well as the primary language of the ruling class in Vietnam, much of the Vietnamese lexicon in all realms consists of Hán Việt words (Sino-Vietnamese words). As a result, punning based on the mixture of Vietnamese and Sino-Vietnamese words is a distinctive feature of the
Vietnamese pun. The following funny tale will contribute to clarifying this observation: Hung at a temple dedicated to a still alive high-ranking Mandarin was a lacquered board that read: “Sinh sự chi”, Sino-Vietnamese words meaning “Thờ ông lúc còn sống” (Worship the alive) in Vietnamese.
Nevertheless, “
d temple really ridiculous.
Using the words that are both Vietnamese and Sino-Vietnamese is an Sinh sự chi” is simutaneously Vietnamese words paraphrased as “vẽ sự ra làm gì” (contriving unnecessary things) [38]. Clearly, taking advantage of the homonymy of “Sinh sự chi”, the author of the writing on the lacquered board implied irony and satire at the superior’s flatterers as well as criticism of waste of the people’s fund. This pun makes the sacre
outstanding feature in Câu đối (Vietnamese parallel sentences). The most difficult given statements (vế ra) often contain both Vietnamese and Sino- Vietnamese words that are written and pronounced the same but having different meanings. Look at the given statement in the following example:
Example 90: Cô Miên ngủ một mình [3, p.82].
In Vietnamese the word cô means “Miss”. But in Sino-Vietnamese it means “một mình” (alone). Similarly, the word Miên denotes a personal
, e ,
t name in Vietnamese, but in Sino-Vietnamese it means “ngủ” (sleep). Then this statement owns two parts: the first part Cô Miên, as Sino-Vietnames words, is itself the synonym of the second one ngủ một mình. Consequently this given statement is paraphrased as follows in Vietnamese: “Một mình ngủ ngủ một mình”. What an interesting challenge to find out the cross statemen (vế đối) for it!
Câu đối is a very special phenomenon in the Vietnamese pun and
hardly has its perf Although parallel
construction is also a popular device in the English language, it is not as
sophisticated as t ary condition of
English para syntactical
ect equivalent in the English one.
he one in Vietnamese. The necess llel constructions is just identical, or similar,
structure in two or more sentences or parts of a sentence such as the one in the following example:
Example 91:
“The seeds ye sow – another reaps, The robes ye weave – another wears, The arms ye forge – another bears.” [20, p.208]
Câu đối requires balance not only in form but also in sound and meaning between the two parts of the sentence. Parallel constructions in English are often backed up by repetition of words and conjunctions and prepositions while the ones in Vietnamese are based on prosodic rules established essentially on the alternation of equal (or bằng) and oblique (or trắc) tones, and the words of the verses are either opposed, or are retorts or responses to each other in meaning and in tone. All these things together make Vietnamese parallel sentences really deep in meaning and full of philosophy and musicality. Example 23 has already supported this argument.
Word separation and combination is used by both the English pun and the Vietnamese one. However, different from word separation and combination in English which is mainly morphological as shown in examples of Tom Swifty, the one in Vietnamese is mainly based on adding
another word to a double-form word (often a compound word or a reduplicative one) so that the second form can combine with the added word to create a compound word whose meaning puns on the meaning of the original word. The word tin tức, for example, means “news” but when combined with the word mình, it becomes “tin tức … mình”. Tức mình means “annoying”. So “tin tức … mình” means “annoying news”. “Ca dao
… cạo” is another good example. Ca dao means “folk song”, but in “ca dao
… cạo”, dao cạo means “razor”. This specific kind of “folk song” is good for satirizing at and criticizing negative practices in the society in Vietnamese humorous newspapers such as “Tuổi trẻ cười”, “Nhi đồng cười” and in funny corners of many other Vietnamese publications. Inserting the structure đã … thì (if…then) into compound words of two forms to show the relationship of cause and effect reveals another distinction. This kind of pun can go on thanks to the fact that a lot of Vietnamese compound words include two forms: the first form contains the main or decisive meaning of the compound word and still remains this meaning standing alone; the second one just supports the meaning of the first one. But, the fineness lies in the relationship
elements, thanks to which when separated, either of them carries an g trọng” (luxurious), for
instance, when sepa urious” and trọng
meaning “respectable”. ” (If luxurious then
respectable) is quite ord forms are put
of cause-effect between the two
independent meaning. “San rated, gives sang still meaning “lux
So, “Đã sang thì trọng logical. Sometimes, the separated w
into parallel structures such as the words lẻ loi and lạ lùng in the following examples:
Examples 92 – 93:
92. Người ta đi đôi về đôi,
Thân anh đi lẻ về loi một mình. [38]
A lot of compound consisting of two forms
which, when separate note opposite things,
which makes a good lan
Examp
93. Đất đâu đất lạ đất lùng, Đi làm lại có thổ công ngồi bờ. [38]
words in Vietnamese d and analyzed independently, de
d for the pun to grow.
le 94:
Chuối chi đã chuối lại cau, Đã mía sao gọi mía lau, hả chàng?
Chuối mà cau còn khá, Mía mà lau cũng chưa lạ, em ơi.
Cá mà bò mới sự ngược đời, Đã rắn lại hổ, thế thời thiếu chi. [38]
Chuối cau, mía lau, cá bò, rắn hổ respectively mean a kind of banana (chuối), sugar cane (mía), fish (cá) and snake (rắn). When separated, the first word in each of these co
cow (bò) and tiger (hổ), respectively. Based on this fact, the punster made such witty verses that pun on the illogicalness ays of punning based can not be attained in the
mpound nouns still remains the main concept of the compound noun but the second one denotes something of opposite kind, namely areca (cau), reed (lau),
between the concepts right in the same word. Such w on the separation and combination of double-form words
English pun.
Word-puzzles based on Sino-Vietnamese writing must be a
“specialty” of the Vietnamese language. Let us consider one more pun of this kind in the following example:
Example 95: “Từ ngày thiếp vắng mặt chàng, Bây giờ liễu đã có ngang ra rồi.” [36]
dren. This way of punning used to be an elegantly
ve presented the similarities and differences f the expre sive means of the pun in English and Vietnamese. The following statistical data conducted on the sam
ill offer a deeper insight into the
ncy (% of the common expressive means of the ese
In the English Pun In the Vietnamese Pun The written Sino-Vietnamese word “liễu”, when added a horizontal stroke (có ngang), turns into the Sino-Vietnamese word “tử” meaning “con”
(child or children) in Vietnamese. The verses in this example are actually the answer for the question in example 25. The woman implies that now she is married and has chil
intellectual game during the feudal age in Vietnam.
So far in this chapter I ha
o s
ple of the study (600 puns in English and 600 ones in Vietnamese) w
findings of the study:
Table 4.1: Relative freque ) pun in English and Vietnam
Expressive means
Number Frequency Number Frequency
Based on sound 150 25% 135 22.5%
Based on sense relations 99 16.5% 165 27.5%
Based on splitting words 6 1% 18 3%
Based on reversible units 57 9.5% 45 7.5%
Based on
different expressive means combining 153 .5 1
25 % 32 22%
Total: 465 77.5% 495 82.5%
Table 4.2: Relative frequency (%
pun in English and Vietna
) of the expressive means unshared by the mese
In the English Pun In the Vietnamese Pun Expressive means
Num er Freq ncy Number Frequencyb ue
Based on homophonous words 30 5% 0 0%
Based on words of the same root ional forms of a word
and the inflect 6 1% 0 0%
Based on rearranging letters of a
word, phrase or sentence 99 16.5% 0 0%
Based on diacritics 0 0% 42 7%
Based on ideogram 0 0% 36 6%
Based on separation and
combination of double-form words 0 0% 27 4.5%
Total: 135 22.5% 105 17.5%
The above statistical results prove that the majority of the samples share the same expressive means (77.5% for the English pun and 82.5% for the Vietnamese one). Punning based on the combination of different expressive means is the most popular in English (25.5%) while sense relations are chosen most by Vietnamese punsters (27.5%). Sound takes the second rank of popularity level among the expressive means of the pun in the two languages. Puns based on splitting words and reversible units in the two languages occur in the same ranks of popularity level and they are rather similar in frequency. The other statistical list shows the fact that the expressive means based on homophonous words, words of the same root, the inflectional forms of a word and on rearranging letters of a word, phrase and sentence are “specialty” of the English pun that can not be found in the