• Komodo Rodeo@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        You know what, I’m adding that to my repertoire too. No sense in letting a good joke go to waste the next time there’s an event with name tags.

  • LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I love this. Haven’t seen a good Polish joke in years and years. In the old days it was like, “Wanna hear a Polish joke?” “Careful, I’m Polish.” “That’s okay, I’ll tell it slow.”

    • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
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      5 hours ago

      I don’t know know if it works in your part of the world but I’ve always enjoyed variants on the old classic:

      I know someone who’s Polish.

      Who’s that?

      Mr. Sheen

    • Gloomy@mander.xyz
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      23 hours ago

      During my childhood, in Germany, during the ninetees and early 2000s, it was manly making fun of the Polish for beeing thiefs or beeing overrun in WWII.

      Insanely racist time, looking back now, but it was just completly normalised.

      • FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        That’s just living in Europe in general though. Everyone makes fun of everyone. Dutch and Belgians and Germans have jokes about each other since we share borders. There’s also stereotypes about the Spanish and Greeks being lazy, the French being rude, that sort of thing.

        • waz@feddit.uk
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          4 hours ago

          Source; Some old German guy….

          Why is there a gutter on both sides of the pavement in Fresia? So they can get walk without scraping their knuckles so bad. Why are Fresian’s arms so long? So they can feel the tits on a cow when they’re snogging them!

        • Gloomy@mander.xyz
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          13 hours ago

          Eh, I don’t know. I mean, sure, there are stereotypes.

          But it feels a bit different. I thinks it’s the difference between friendly banter, like friends do it sometimes, and blatant bullying.

          I’ve done a little experiment. I went to https://witze.net/ , a website that is German and filled with humour that must be at least 30 years old. Many jokes refer to cultural events from that time (there was one about the explosion of the Challenger, which was in 1986). So that should give a good example of the time period I was reffing to.

          You find examples of friendly banter for the French, etc.:

          "Whats European heaven like?

          The Englishman opens the door for you, the French is cooking, the Italian is the Entertainment and the German takes care of organising everything.

          What’s European hell like?

          The Frenchman opens the door, the Englishman is cooking, the German is the Entertainer and the Italian takes care of organising everything."

          Not funny, but also just a play on stereotypes. It’s like that.

          The polish stereotype is “they are thiefs”.

          “Whs do Russians always steal two cars? Because they have to drive trough Poland on their way back.”

          “Why is Viagra not allowed in Poland? Because everything that stands longer than 10 Minute is stolen.”

          And on and on.

          Am I imagining that there is a difference if your stereotype is “bad at humour” (which the German website proves quite well ironically) or “steals everything all the time”?

          • Tja@programming.dev
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            5 hours ago

            To be fair, the 90s in Poland were a rough time to own a car.

            We made a tourism campaign out of it at least: “Come to Poland! Your car is already here”.

  • xye@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    Polish jokes are a reflection of imperialist propaganda, imported and spread through American xenophobia. This is funny, I just also like history

    • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      I’m just now realizing that “pole” does not mean a metal cylindrical object and, infact, is a group of people living in Poland

      • Soggy@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        We used to say “Polack” but only in a derogatory way because people arw terrible.

      • xye@lemm.ee
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        23 hours ago

        Polish jokes are a reflection of imperialist propaganda, imported and spread through American xenophobia. This is funny, I just also like history

        • thefartographer@lemm.ee
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          22 hours ago

          Hey, I’m looking for reflections of imperialist propaganda, imported and spread through some specific American folly. Can you think of any comedy subgenres that might fit this description?

          • xye@lemm.ee
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            20 hours ago

            Hoo boy do I envy you. So, upon opening up its trade ports to the Dutch, Japan not only ushered in a cultural revolution, but a culinary one. Many new styles of foods and flavors were introduced. Some people didn’t like this though. They thought they should just stick to native fruits and vegetables, not these foreign bananas (ばな literally “wood foot food”) the Dutch typically brought with them. So, preparing for their own future imperialist ambitions, Japan invented coded language using food to refer to their future rivals. When the Americans caught yellow fever during WW2, they imported many of these same racist jokes. They still carry on this tradition today - you can find out more at the historical resource lemonparty.org

            • shneancy@lemmy.world
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              12 hours ago

              okay so i clicked that link and first a NSFW of two elderly gentlemen flashed and then a chatroom opened, is that- is that the historical resource?

          • VerbFlow@lemmy.world
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            21 hours ago

            You should check out Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It’s pretty old by now, but it still works as reflections of imperialist propaganda, imported and spread through U.S. troops with names like Derek and Brad.

            • thefartographer@lemm.ee
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              21 hours ago

              Yes, happy to help!

              You will need flour, sugar, milk, eggs, butter, blueberries, a sacrificial lamb, and a spawn of Satan.

              Take the wet ingredients and mix vigorously and then add the dry until you get a soupy, lumpy paste. Rub this all over your body and then go outside to yell at your neighbors and their children. Then, hang out with Satan’s spawn and your new pet goat.

      • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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        22 hours ago

        I can’t speak to the opinions of the Polish people, but I’d imagine that’s considered an upgrade from when the jokes were largely about them being bafflingly stupid.

      • Gutek8134@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        I thought I had a meme about Polish people doing Florida man stuff, but I didn’t

        The only one I remember is this story

        Accept this kurwa as a substitute: KURWA

    • OmegaLemmy@discuss.online
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      18 hours ago

      Polish is easier to read when written in Cyrillic, but apparently native poles don’t like that idea. Why not invent your own alphabet or Atleast bring over some Cyrillic phonology for specific letters?

      • Rooty@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        The Czechs and Croats solved this problem by adding Č,Ć,Đ,Ž,Š and DŽ letters, while Poles continued to use letters ill suited for writing down sounds unique to slavic languages.

        • shneancy@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          i don’t get it, we also added some new letters (ą, ę, ś, ć, etc.), and some digraphs (sz, cz, rz, ch, etc.). how is it different from what Czechs and Croats did?

        • OmegaLemmy@discuss.online
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          18 hours ago

          Polish reminds me of Korean Romanization where you twist entire words into weird structures so Brits and Americans don’t mispronounce it, except it’s the entire language and even the natives deal with it (funny)