Problem Of Universals Puns

Listen now to the story of the two brothers Hing and Ming. Each was devoted to the search for ultimate wisdom, but they differed greatly on how it was to be found. One day their pet chicken fell ill, began to molt, and soon lost all of its feathers! The brothers decided that this would be an ideal test case and agreed to each spend two months trying to cure the chicken. Hing immediately went back to the university. Having boned up on ornithology and traditional Chinese medicine, he decided that the answer was a prescription of gum-tree leaf tea. He gathered bushels of the tea leaves, brewed gallons of the tea, and poured it into the chicken for the two months.

Meanwhile, Ming traveled all around China, praying at the shrines of his ancestors. One night he had a dream. His ancestors appeared and told him to feed the chicken tea made from gum-tree leaves!!!

Ming, aware of his brother’s lack of success, decided that the problem was quantity. He gathered whole CARTLOADS of leaves, and brewed BARRELS of the tea, and poured them into the chicken for the two months. At the end of the time, the poor chicken was still as naked as a bowling ball.

Moral: All of Hing’s courses, and all of Ming’s kin; couldn’t make gum tea re-feather a hen!

How do two programmers make money? One writes viruses, the other anti-viruses.

Where’s the best place to hide a body? Page two of Google.

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history – with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

If it weren’t for C, we’d all be programming in BASI and OBOL.

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

In a world without fences and walls, who needs Gates and Windows?

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes.

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurling down the highway.

An SQL statement walks into a bar and sees two tables. It approaches, and asks “may I join you?”

Why is it that programmers always confuse Halloween with Christmas?

Because 31 OCT = 25 DEC.

Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft… and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.

How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb? None. It’s a hardware problem.

I named my hard drive “dat ass” so once a month my computer asks if I want to ‘back dat ass up’.

I think my neighbor is stalking me as she’s been googling my name on her computer. I saw it through my telescope last night.

I changed my password to “incorrect”. So whenever I forget what it is the computer will say “Your password is incorrect”.

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.

It’s ok computer, I go to sleep after 20 minutes of inactivity too.

Entered what I ate today into my new fitness app and it just sent an ambulance to my house.

A clean house is the sign of a broken computer.

Wifi went down during family dinner tonight. One kid started talking and I didn’t know who he was.

I would like to thank everybody that stuck by my side for those five long minutes my house didn’t have internet.

A TV can insult your intelligence, but nothing rubs it in like a computer.

Are you a computer whiz? it seems you know how to turn my software to hardwar

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