Getting the joke 30 years later - just me?

[HappySquid]

I have just realised that Shaun the Sheep's name is a play on words (Shaun/shorn). Feeling rather sheepish.

Has anyone else come across a joke that only sunk in many years later or is it just me?!

Who knew Blyton could be so post modern?

Thank you. All this carry on about it not making sense is not helped by the joke being wrong in the first place

Its like -

Two fish are in a tank and one says ‘do you know how to drive this thing?’

or

Two parrots on a perch and one says ‘can you smell fish?’

It’s a play on words having two meanings.

A close shave came out in 1995, so nearly 30 years. The TV series was later though

In my Irish accent I’d say Seán, Shawn and Shaun the same way.

Shorn is different as I pronounce the r. The vowel sound is different too (the same as in show).

Sean without a fada is pronounced shan. It means old. If I saw it written without the fada for someone’s name I’d say Seán/Shaun though.

Where I am an á gives an aw sound but it’s not the same in all dialects. Ulster Irish’s á is different so Seán probably sounds a bit different there.

The joke was not wrong in the first place!

A classic case of Chinese whispers this thread 😄

What's the Hitchhiker joke? Irs not sinking in 😆

After about forty years, it suddenly came to me why my old male colleagues used to say a man was "dressed up like a pox doctor's clerk." I had thought it was just a crass expression.

The joke, of course, is about who would know what a pox doctor's clerk looks like.

Thinking about misunderstood more than missing the joke . I know someone who is a DJ and was asked to play 'I know him so well " from Chess for the first dance at a wedding reception......

Thank you @Longrider ! The wiki page gives the Ulster variant as Séan not Seán and says it's anglicised as Shane/Shayne.

@CharlotteStreetW1

Yes, you did have it right the first time, but it somehow got mangled later in the thread by another poster so I was just clarifying because the "explanation" of "why does Noddy have big ears?" made no sense.

You mean the 'unpleasantly like being drunk ... ask a glass of water' one?

Well, just imagine being in a glass and swilled into a persons mouth and onwards!

I only just got this today 🥲

Surely not!

To be honest, I think the mangling was funnier than the joke!

For the glass of water, use the "being imbibed" version if drunk, rather than the "being intoxicated" version of drunk.

Well I have literally only just got this, Knockturn Alley / nocturnally.

I was an adult when I read the books, so not excuse.

They're not homonyms no but they are homophones

There are lots of Seáns there too though.

In some accents Shaun and shorn do sound the same but in others, like mine, they don’t at all. So they’re not always homophones, it depends on the accent.

I was going to say the same about Scousers. I can pronounce the ch sound but I can't roll my r's. In fact I can't get the r right in any language except my own accent

I also think Shaun and shorn sound the same even if you roll the r. I mean not absolutely identical but close enough for the joke to still work.

In some accents Shaun and shorn do sound the same but in others, like mine, they don’t at all. So they’re not always homophones, it depends on the accent.

I think everyone has got that by now, the point was they're not homonyms.

You may think that. It isn't correct though.

The vowel sound is different too. The joke doesn’t work for lots of people and, unless they’ve seen the film, they’d be unlikely to guess Shaun was meant to sound like shorn. Well I hadn’t a clue anyway 😅

Edited, unless you pronounce Shaun like brown