How didn't the North Koreans catch the pun "We paean the DPRK. We paean their great leader Kim Il Sung"?
score:9
There are a couple reasons.
The first is that this was an "official" communication, which is to say that it was a written communication. So Commander Bucher chose a very sophisticated but entirely proper word in "paean." If anything, the North Koreans might be flattered by being communicated to in such a sophisticated way. Certainly, it would pass the test of "the Queen's English."
On the other hand, an English word with a given spelling might be pronounced differently by an American, an Englishman, and an Australian. The North Koreans were aware of this fact and might not have attached any significance to Bucher's "funny" pronunciation. For them, the written word was the key. This partly derives from the following:
A second reason is the fact that Korean has many more "h*m*nyms" than western languages. These are words that are spelled and sound alike, but have very different meanings. For instance, in "western" (not Korean) text, the word "pang" could mean either "direction" or "fat." It would then be possible to construct a sentence that "We admire the "pang" (direction) of Kim Il Sung." But in the appropriate context, it could also mean, "We admire the "fatness" of Kim Il Sung.
In another "confession" Bucher admitted to either "violating" or "penetrating" North Korean waters. The North Korans reasonably took that as an admission that he had, in fact, "invaded" North Korean waters. But Bucher intended his remarks to mean that he had "raped" them. Just as he "paeaned" them.
Upvote:2
I wouldn't have gotten it either. Took me a while to get it after seeing the joke. Born in Romania, lived 20-ish years in Canada. Canadian citizen.
One reason is that the English pronounciation is not the Greek/Latin pronunciation (different vowels).
More post
- 📝 What were the expectations of a medieval castle or fortress hoping to break or outlast a siege?
- 📝 What are the "blue books" of Mr. Balfour?
- 📝 Are there any ancient sources clearly testifying a frozen Tiber river in the year 398, 396, 271, and 177 BCE?
- 📝 Why is Hungary geographically important to travel between Europe and the Middle East?
- 📝 Accidental wars
- 📝 Did syphilis, polio, hepatitis, and encephalitis come to general world from the Americas?
- 📝 Keynesian economics during his era
- 📝 Were there any monarchs of England or the United Kingdom who were not technically first in the line of succession?
- 📝 What did the post world war two civilian food ration consist of in the UK?
- 📝 What's the history of the source of the slogan "power to the people"?
- 📝 During the Great Depression, did the US Army do a study involving paying people to dig a hole and fill it back up?
- 📝 Why was Woody Woodpecker a "natural" hit during WW2?
- 📝 How much did J. Robert Oppenheimer get paid while overseeing the Manhattan Project?
- 📝 Has a country gone to war to seek payment of a debt since 1900?
- 📝 Why weren't the Egyptians attacked on sight in the ancient Battle of Megiddo?
- 📝 Which college president nearly finished a book in 1914 that argued that there would be no more wars?
- 📝 How many times was Vaclav Havel under arrest and under what - presumably trumped up charges - was he indicted?
- 📝 What was the cleanest war ever fought?
- 📝 Did Theodore Roosevelt ever say the "things that will destroy America" quote?
- 📝 Has a criminal organisation ever become a formal government?
- 📝 Did Demosthenes complain about inflation of prices in philippics?
- 📝 Has any (nominally) democratic government ever been domestically overthrown without military assistance?
- 📝 Einstein's World War IV quote?
- 📝 Identify tank or artillery shell
- 📝 Who is the oldest ruler whose remains can be positively identified?
- 📝 Did the Soviet Union investigate greenhouses in the early 1920's?
- 📝 What kind of music was played at European, High Middle Age (c. 1100-1400 A.D.) universities' ceremonies?
- 📝 What kind of AA defenses did the US East Coast have around the time of Paukenschlag?
- 📝 Is there any myth in Thucydides?
- 📝 Gregorian dating in the Julian time period?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How didn't the North Koreans catch the pun "We paean the DPRK. We paean their great leader Kim Il Sung"?
- 📝 How kind were the Muslim occupations of North Africa?
- 📝 How did the elite maintain the status quo throughout the British Colonies of North America?
- 📝 How were the Morisco refugees from Europe received in North Africa, given that they were foreigners and Christian?
- 📝 How many surface ships have reached the North Pole?
- 📝 How did the education system in Colonial North America work?
- 📝 How did the baking soda recipe for crack cocaine catch on?
- 📝 How did the forces required for invading Norway compare to those actually used for invading North Africa?
- 📝 How many people were fighting in the North Korean Army in peak strength in the Korean War?
- 📝 How many people did the Islamic Caliphate send to the Maghreb during the Arabization of North Africa?
- 📝 How did the Jats come to own so much land in North West India?
- 📝 How did the the Soviet-China near-war in 1969 affect the supply of arms to North Vietnam?
- 📝 How do historians and linguists know how to pronounce the names from non-phonetic scripts?
- 📝 Why did Native Americans die from European diseases while Europeans didn't catch serious diseases from the New World?
- 📝 How and when did the word "nuclear" replace the word "atomic"?
- 📝 How did Israel win the Six-Day War?
- 📝 How did the general population of England convert so smoothly to Protestantism?
- 📝 How did the USSR manage to innovate in an environment characterized by government censorship and high bureaucracy?
- 📝 How did the Romans do division?
- 📝 How did 300,000 people survive the 3 1/2 year siege of Sarajevo?
- 📝 When and how did the USA and the UK become allies?
- 📝 How did the authorities not find the speakeasy clubs during the prohibition?
- 📝 How did such a relatively minor event as the assassination of an archduke start World War I?
- 📝 How did the Roman state verify citizenship?
- 📝 How did the Nazis plan to defeat America during World War II?
- 📝 How do ancient Chinese "mirrors" such as these in the National Museum function?
- 📝 How do we know the gender distribution of cave art painters?
- 📝 How did the ancient Romans count with their fingers?
- 📝 How were smallpox vaccines enforced in the US?
- 📝 What led some people to (correctly) believe that there was no land under the ice cap at the North Pole?
