Inadvertent Achievement

As anyone who has ever tried to tell an American joke to a foreigner or to understand a joke from another culture knows, most humor is cultural.  Humor often involves cultural references or plays on words that aren’t so funny if it isn’t your culture or language.  I think that I am a fairly witty person in English, but I make no attempts to be funny in Lithuanian.

So imagine my surprise when I inadvertently made a witty comment in Lithuanian on Wednesday.  I was chatting in Lithuanian with colleagues at the university when suddenly they started laughing.  At first I was concerned, because I had not intended to say anything funny.  However, my comment was apparently a clever play on words in the context of our conversation.  They all remarked that my Lithuanian language is now so good that I can make jokes.  I decided to accept the compliment and not admit that I didn’t actually understand what was quite so funny about my comment.  I count even an inadvertent witticism as an achievement!

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