Puns

You may groan when someone makes a pun, but it's unlikely that that will stop the perpetrator from punning in the future. Punning has a long history, and is a technique that has been used by the most illustrious of historical figures. The ancient Roman orators Cicero and Quintilian believed that the use of puns indicated an intellectually supple mind, and was a sign of rhetorical skill. Shakespeare frequently uses puns, too, for instance in Hamlet, in the scene between the grave-digger and Hamlet, where the grave-digger makes puns on the different meaning of the word 'lie', and in As You Like It, where Shakespeare plays on the words hour and whore, which were pronounced identically at the time (see this old post). Jesus Christ used puns in his native Aramaic, for example in his statement 'upon this rock I will build my church', a pun on the name Peter and the ancient Greek word for 'rock', petra.

 

Most of the above comes from an interesting piece on the BBC website this week about the history of paronomasia, or wordplay based on punning. Commentators have always argued about the hidden meaning and purpose of puns, and have disagreed as to whether they are good things or not. Freud felt they were a sign of weakness, used instead of uttering unpleasant truths.

 

One clever pun I came across recently - while touring Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam - was this one, sent by Frederick the Great of Prussia, to Voltaire:

The top picture is an invitation, which, if you spell out the mathematical sum reads:

à sous p à cent sous si (sous means 'under', and cent is 100)

which is a pun on à souper à Sanssouci (to supper in Sanssouci).

Voltaire's response, Ja! is not the German word for 'yes' but is another pun:

J grand, a petit (large J, small a), pronounced in French j'ai grand appetit (I've got a large appetite).

 

Here's the BBC article.

 

 

Comments

[markonsea]

Unfortunately, a French J is pronounced "gi" as in "Gigi", so "Ja" does not work.

In the version I was told, the conversation was reversed:

- G a.

- Venez sous p à 100 sous ci.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks for your comment, Mark. I copied and pasted the above pun from another site, but I've just been back to my diary to look at the copy I made from the exhibition at Sanssouci Palace recently. I wrote down 6 over 100 and not Si, and I also wrote a space between the J and the a, which is what was exhibited in the palace. Otherwise it was displayed in the order I have in the post. Of course, that may be just how they have chosen to display it.

As for the pronunciation of French J, in Voltaire's time the pronunciation was 'je', according to the 1762 edition of the French Academy's dictionary. The entry for J reads:
J substantif masculin La dixième lettre de l'Alphabet, qu'on appelle abusivement J consonne, & que dans l'appellation moderne on nomme Je; de sorte que l'on dit aujourd'hui un J, en le prononçant comme la dernière syllabe du mot Ange.

Here's the link:
http://portail.atilf.fr/cgi-bin/getobject_?p.7:5./var/artfla/dicos/ACAD_1762/IMAGE/

Of course, that's not quite the 'j'ai' sound required for the message.

This 1762 edition of the Dictionary (the 4th) was the first edition where the letters i and j were separated out as two separate letters. Previously, i and j words had appeared together in the same section (as they did in Johnson's famous English dictionary of 1755, too).

[Marc Leavitt]

Susan:
As an inveterate punster, I've always
enjoyed making them. I find them good descriptive shorthand, and to paraphrase Robert Browning, "Man's reach should exceedd hjis grasp, else what's a metaphor?"

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks, Marc. I was interested to read that line of Browning's.