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Silly jokes to translate

Here are some Tommy Cooper (UK comic, no longer with us) jokes translated into French. What were they originally?

Je suis allé chez le médecin l'autre jour. J'ai allongé le bras en disant: «ça fait mal quand je fais ça ». Il a dit: «Eh bien, ne le faites pas».

Je suis monté dans le grenier et j’ai trouvé un Stradivarius et un Rembrandt. Malheureusement Stradivarius était un peintre nul et Rembrandt a fait des violons moches.

Nous allions atterrir en avion et ça fait mal aux oreilles, n'est-ce pas? L'hôtesse m'a donné du chewing-gum. Je l'ai mis dans les oreilles. Il a fallu deux jours pour le faire sortir.

Un policier m'a arrêté, l'autre soir, il a tapé sur la fenêtre de la voiture et m’a dit: «Voulez-vous souffler dans ce sac, Monsieur. J'ai dit: «Pourquoi, monsieur l'agent?" Il a dit: «Mes frites sont trop chaudes».

Un homme entre dans une épicerie et il dit, je veux cinq livres de pommes de terre s'il vous plaît. L'épicier dit « nous ne vendons que des kilos ». Alors l'homme dit : « je prendrai cinq livres de kilos ».

J'ai pris un repas la nuit dernière. J'ai commandé tout en français. Tout le monde était surpris. C'était un restaurant chinois.

Mon ami a dit: «Mon chien ne mange pas de viande». J'ai dit: «Pourquoi pas?». Il a dit: «Nous ne lui en donnons pas »

Je suis allé à Blackpool en vacances et j’ai frappé à la porte de la première pension que j’ai trouvée. Une femme a passé la tête par une fenêtre à l'étage et a dit: «Que voulez-vous?». «Je voudrais rester ici ». 'Ok. Restez là ».

Je suis allé chez le médecin. Il a dit « vous avez une maladie très grave ». J'ai dit: «Je veux une deuxième opinion». Il a dit «D’accord, vous êtes laid aussi."

Comments

  1. Dom26 November 2013 at 12:15

    Thanks for these, Steve. I love them. I'm currently looking into doing a similar thing with some of Tim Vine's jokes. Dom.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Steve Smith26 November 2013 at 13:02

    Thanks, Dom.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nick Bilbrough4 December 2013 at 10:43

    I love these Steve. French isn't my best L2 (by any stretch of the imagination) but it's interesting how motivating these are to read. I think we could do the same with song lyrics from current hits. It could be a kind of game where we show them the lyrics in French and get them to say who the singer is. Here's one I used from last year to demonstrate the idea with a group of French teachers.

    Il ne s'agit pas de fric, de fric, de fric
    On n'en a rien à faire de votre fric, votre fric, votre fric,
    Ce qui nous importe c'est de faire danser le monde

    Nick

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nick Bilbrough4 December 2013 at 10:47

    I love these Steve. French isn't my best second language (by any stretch of the imagination!) but it's interesting how motivating it is to read these and work out the joke. I think we could do something similar with lyrics from current hits. We show the lyrics in French to the kids and get them to say who the singer is. Here's one from last year that I used to demonstrate the idea with a group of French teachers.

    Il ne s'agit pas de fric, de fric, de fric
    On n'en a rien à faire de votre fric, votre fric, votre fric,
    Ce qui nous importe c'est de faire danser le monde

    Nick

    ReplyDelete
  5. Steve Smith4 December 2013 at 10:49

    Thanks for commenting. The song lyrics idea sounds good. Pity I don't know many new songs! Maybe some classics would work. I'll think about that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous21 November 2017 at 10:39

      If you want to do this as a guess the current song activity giving students a few lines in French then this singer Sara'h does cover versions in French of lots of up to date songs by Adele, Bieber etc.... Here is a pink song as an example. Clips all have the lyrics in French as subtitles - great for teaching! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxUmZke8_Lw&list=PLFKjbGEwP3cvnRCZZGYVSJqkDR4m_HcU_

      Delete
    2. Steve Smith21 November 2017 at 12:01

      Not dissimilar to Nick's idea above. Thanks for commenting.

      Delete

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