Posted by Nick on July 14, 1999 at 16:36:16:
In Reply to: Re: "What a word's worth" - Part 2 posted by Martin G. on July 14, 1999 at 16:16:35:
: Now consider the following experiment: go to any of your acquaintances, and ask them the following riddle:
: A man and his son are driving in a car. They get stuck on a railway crossing and get hit by a train. The man is killed outright, the son is taken seriously hurt to hospital and into the operating theatre.
: The doctor walks into the operating theatre, takes one look at the patient, and says: "I can't operate on him! He's my son!"
: How can this be?
: When I first heard this riddle, I thought this was not very clever, but then I did try it out on people, and about half actually didn't get it till the joke was pointed out.
: This joke is possible in English and French, but impossible in German and most of the Slavic languages.
This joke works in Russian and German and Polish. I don't know about other Slavic languages. Why would it not? I think I am missing something here...