A good joke can be hardest thing to understand when studying a foreign language.As a recent report in The Guardian newspaper(衛(wèi)報(bào)) noted, "There's more to understanding a joke in a foreign language than (1)
understanding
understanding
vocabulary and grammar."
Being able to understand jokes is hard for a language learner to(2)
make
make
friends with native(說母語的)speakers. "I always felt that humor was a ceiling(天花板)that I could never break through." Lina Brown,a public relations manager in London,told The Guardian,"I used to study in Japan.I could never speak to Japanese people on the same level as I would speak to a native English speaker.I was almost a boring person(3)
because
because
all I could talk about was facts."
In fact,most of the time,jokes are only funny for people who share a cultural background(文化背景)or understand humor in the(4)
same
same
way.Chinese-American actor Joe Wong found this out firsthand.He had achieved huge success in the US,but when he returned to China for his first live show in Beijing,he discovered that people(5)
didn't
didn't
think his Chinese jokes were as funny as his English ones.
In Australia,many foreigners find understanding jokes about(6)
sports
sports
to be the biggest headache.Let's take rugby(橄欖球)as an example. "The hardest jokes are related to rugby because I know nothing about rugby and few people play it in China." said Zhang Xiao,a doctor in a hospital in Beijing.He was (7)
once
once
a student in Australia.He added,"When I heard jokes I didn't get,I just laughed along."
In the other two major English-speaking countries,the sense of humor is also different.British jokes seem to be more subtitle(微妙的)and dark,while American jokes are more obvious(明顯的)with their meanings,a bit like Americans (8)
themselves
themselves
.