I'm gonna go postal.
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
... keep reading on reddit ➡A few days ago, I was with family and Aunt #1 was showing me a book about antique stamps for collectors and the many thousands of dollars some of them cost. When she talked about her stamp collection, I said "That's a sticky habit."
Aunt #2 groaned and said, "What are you? Uncle R (her husband)?"
A few minutes later, I told her, "It's okay. You can address your resentment of stamp-related puns to me. I'm not afraid. [walking to edge of the room] I can take a licking right here in this corner if I have to! C'mon, go postal on me!"
My dad was talking about going in to the post office to complain about something (too long to explain what) and he told me he was "going to go in there and go postal on them"
We were discussing how July 3rd is the Observed Holiday for Independence Day this year.
Co-worker: I just don't get that...
Boss: It's so all of the government workers have a day off... and so mailmen don't go postal
I told my Dad that I'd be working in the mail-room of my campus.
Dad: "That's great! Is it going to be a lot of work"
Me: "No, it should be pretty easy"
Dad: "That's good. I wouldn't want you to go postal!"
