Music of Africa Puns

Halfway through the show, the music stops and Bono stands middle stage clapping his hands every few seconds. "Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies" Without missing a beat, from somewhere in the front of the crowd a man bellows out in a thick Irish accent: "Well stop fucking doing it ya evil bastard!"

For all of my life, my brain has played a soundtrack. At all times, in all places, I hear music going through my head, from the moment I awaken in the morning until I go to sleep at night. I can only shut it off by listening to other music, watching a movie, etc. but it soon starts up again once the outside source of stimulus is removed.

Yesterday I was travelling. When I visited the restroom prior to boarding my flight, the the music in my head suddenly switched tracks from "I've Been Everywhere Man" (that got really old after the first hour. Oy!) to "Africa" by Toto. "That's odd", I thought to myself, "the music in my head usually doesn't switch tracks unless something has changed around me." I finished my business, cleaned up, stood up, and turned around to flush.

Then I saw it. There, emblazoned on the porcelain, was the word "TOTO". The manufacturer of the toilet. "Nice job, brain, funny, hah-hah," I thought to myself.

The song in my head came to an abrupt halt. Silence, for just one moment. Blessed silence. Rare for me. Then I realized. My brain was giving me time to digest the previous joke. Waiting for me to think I'd arrived at the punch line. Pausing for a beat before it delivered the next one. "Africa" started over again, telling me exactly why the DJ deciding songs in my head had picked this exact moment, this exquisite situation, this exact set of circumstances to deliver the internal Dad Joke of the year:

"Doodoo doo-doo doodoo do dooooooooo...."

Note: Quality Very Varying (I see what I did there) and sometimes subject to specialist knowledge. So I apologise in advance. Shame me with your better puns.

While I was languishing in the Language Centre, doing some semantics antics and considering how all the other linguistics students despised and derided me, I was accosted by a stout man with large glasses who made me a preposition. It was that I should collect terrible puns, to do with linguistics, in order to ingratiate myself yet further with the other linguistics students (including even the phonetics fanatics).

I'm struggling to think of a pun to do with grammaticality that both makes sense and "Is grandma tickly?" correct. I'm also stuck on 'morphologician'. (I'm not actually sure that's a particularly logical word for the subject, though I guess that's more for, er, more for a logician to worry about.)

The problem I have with writing about phonological variation is that one is constantly forced to choose between being fun or logical - very Asian!I always get in trouble with electricians, they think I'm calling them a 'dialectician' whereas in fact I'm just saying "Die, electrician."

I like pscycholinguistics – the only department of linguistics where it’s acceptable to wear a cycle helmet. My Australian accent is terrible but I like to think my Sath Efrican one is predicate. My favourite accent is Received Pronunciation, because it is the accent chiefly used by invisible Japanese people who are ordered online. When the first recipient of an invisible Japanese person got the parcel, they wrote a complaint saying "Received but can't see Asian" and the name stuck.

Why did the speakers whose native languages weren't English, but whose only shared language was English, but they weren't very good at it and kept on having to stop to think about it, stop talking to one another? They came to an agreement. (Get it? If not, write your answer on a pastecard and paste it to the below address.)

What did the 'a' say to the 'the'? "You definitely are ticklish, 'the'!"

Why was the small man eaten by the large bear, which was proportionately bigger than him? It had, er, relative claws.

I think the reason there are so many speakers of Russian is because they all partake in an activity called "copulae shun". (Ok, ok, I know, that was Pushkin it.)

I know a man called Hillary who can, might, should, did, must, shall and will ride an ox. We call him "Ox Hillary".

I always think the verb 'to be' in the senten