Linguists...
A gentleman wanders around the campus of a college looking for the library. He approaches a student and asked, "Excuse me young man. Would you be good enough and tell me where the library is at?" The student, in a very arrogant and belittling tone, replied, "I sorry, sir, but at this school, we are taught never to end a sentence with a preposition!"
The gentleman smiled, and in a very apologetic tone replied, "I beg your pardon. Please allow me to rephrase my question. Would you be good enough to tell me where the library is at, butthole?"
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"I've just had the most awful time," said a boy to his friends. "First I got angina pectoris, then arteriosclerosis. Just as I was recovering, I got psoriasis. They gave me hypodermics, and to top it all, tonsillitis was followed by appendectomy."
"Wow! How did you pull through?" sympathized his friends.
"I don't know," the boy replied. "Toughest spelling test I ever had."
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The linguist's husband walked in and caught his wife sleeping with a young co-ed. He said, "Why, Susan, I'm surprised." She bolted upright, pointed her finger and corrected him, "No. I am surprised. You are astonished."
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A linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn't a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative." A voice from the back of the room retorted, "Yeah, right."
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The manager of a large city zoo was drafting a letter to order a pair of animals. He sat at his computer and typed the following sentence: "I would like to place an order for two mongooses, to be delivered at your earliest convenience."
He stared at the screen, focusing on that odd word mongooses. Then he deleted the word and added another, so that the sentence now read: "I would like to place an order for two mongeese, to be delivered at your earliest convenience."
Again he stared at the screen, this time focusing on the new word, which seemed just as odd as the original one. Finally, he deleted the whole sentence and started all over. "Everyone knows no full-stocked zoo should be without a mongoose," he typed. "Please send us two of them."
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Mr Goldberg, from Pinsk, coming to America, shared a table in the ship's dining room with a Frenchman. Mr Goldberg could speak neither French nor English; the Frenchman could speak neither Russian nor Yiddish.
The first day out, the Frenchman approached the table, bowed and said, "Bon appétit!" Goldberg, puzzled for a moment, bowed back and replied "Goldberg."
Every day, at every meal, the same routine occured.
On the fifth day, another passenger took Goldberg aside. "Listen, the Frenchman isn't telling you his name. He's saying 'Good Appetite,' that's what 'Bon appétit!' means."
At the next meal, Mr Goldberg, beaming, bowed to the Frenchman and said, "Bon appétit!". And the Frenchman, beaming, replied: "Goldberg!"
Leo Rosten, The Joys of Yiddish
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The village blacksmith finally found an apprentice willing to work hard for long hours. The blacksmith immediately began his instructions to the lad, "When I take the shoe out of the fire, I'll lay it on the anvil; and when I nod my head, you hit it with this hammer." The apprentice did just as he told. Now he's the village blacksmith. You can join Unsolved Mysteries and post your own mysteries or
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