When you stop to think about it, puns are actually pretty neat.

  • yesman@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    Sign language has puns. But the gestures are similar, rather than the sounds.

    Sign language is fascinating because it works exactly like other languages. It has rhymes, again with similar gesture rather than sound. Some people stutter in sign; being stuck in a repeated gesture.

    This is further evidence for the theory that language is something inherent in human brains.

      • not_woody_shaw@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        Like it was not just invented by a generic computation machine called the human brain, multiple times in different locations. Its more fundamental than that.

      • yesman@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        There was a competing theory that language was a technology that we developed and therefore had to learn rather than being innate.

        We tortured a whole bunch of apes in the 70s & 80s trying to teach them language when it was always an exclusive ability of humans.

        ( I know that chimps could do sign language and stuff, but they never developed language; only able to express simple desires and emotions that they were well capable of without doing sign. And yes, Koko the gorilla’s ability was mostly a stage act. I’m sorry. )

  • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    Jokes and puns show a mastery of the language they’re written in.

    I know a little Spanish, I can write technical documentation in Spanish well enough with some translation assistance. I can’t make a joke in Spanish, though. I especially can’t make a pun, which relies on knowledge of both the joke and the “straight intention” of the pun.

    If you can make a pun in another language off the top of your head I’d probably consider you fluent in that language for all intents and purposes.