Trouble No More Puns

There was, for instance, the time he conducted a crew of new S.A.R.H. (Society for the Aesthetic Rearrangement of History -BJ) recruits – all from late twentieth-century Terra – on a training study of Carter’s World, a newly established agricultural colony attempting to support itself by the export of edible nuts. Barely into their second generation, and having yet to show a profit, the colonists were technologically backward. Nevertheless, they showed a surprising ingenuity in the use of their few advantages. It was this resourcefulness that Feghoot was demonstrating to his rookies.

“Look at the perfection with which these streets are graded”, exclaimed one student. “Earth-moving machinery on this scale is strictly high technology stuff. How can they do it?”

“A new alleyway is being constructed, nearby”, said Feghoot. “Let us walk that way while I explain.” As they strolled, he told his students that countless centuries before, the Carter’s World system had been inhabited by a now-vanished race of giants. This very planet had served them for a nursery, and among the many artifacts they had left were thousands of childrens blocks, immense and precision-cut. You simply jack one up onto logs, bring it where you want it, put collapsible jacks underneath, snake out the logs, spread soil more or less evenly beneath, and collapse the jacks.

“I see”, said the student. “It’s not graded road at all; its a simple hammered-earth base.”

“That’s right,” Feghoot went on smoothly. “You just hit the road jack and don’t come back no mo.”

His students registered dismay and anguish.

“Isn’t that right, old-timer?,” Feghoot demanded of an ancient Carterian standing by the mouth of the newly completed alley they had just reached.

“Ahm afraid not, suh”, said the senior citizen, and the students giggled at Feghoots discomfiture. “Oh, we used to do it that way, but it was far too much trouble. It’s the soil heah. You see, the very same soil which produced our famous cashews is so high in clay content that a child could roll out a road of it. Then, we simply use a system of lenses to bake it into hardness. Ahve just completed this alley mahself, and ahm just a retired professor of Sports History, much too old and feeble to handle hydraulic jacks.

“So you see,” he finished, eyes twinkling, “Mah hammered alley is really cashews clay.”

Howls of agony rose from the students, but Feghoot never hesitated. “And he”, he said, turning to his students, “is clearly the gradi

My GF has trouble with lactose. We are finding more and more items that are marketed to be healthy to contain whey protein, which aggravates her stomach. It's in products you wouldn't expect it to be in either, like chips.

Anyways, after picking up and putting back a couple of things in a row and being frustrated, she said, "I can't believe all this stuff has whey in it!" to which I of course said...

"No WHEY?!"

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