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?!

Thanks to all those of you discussing dialects/accents however you want to describe it for ruining a light-hearted thread, could you not have started your own body thread about if?!

Watch the first film if you still don't understand it

Yes, I think we can agree that we’re all aware that most of the rest of the world will have a different accent to our own. Obviously 😁

You’re wrong though, some people do think that pun should have worked for everyone, that’s the trouble.

We’re accused of being ‘faux-confused’.

They apparently think that because people watch TV, listen to radio etc it means that they can make an English-accent-dependent connection between a name and another word (which is not mentioned at any stage) without being prompted.

Anyway. It doesn’t work like that.
I do understand that the context of the film would have made things clear btw.
But without that it’s not happening.

Don’t worry, I’m going to shut up now!! But really, some of the attitudes on this thread are bewildering 😂

But really, some of the attitudes on this thread are bewildering 😂
Ain't that the truth?

I don’t think it is. It just means fester I think? Like Uncle Rancid or something.

I did read somewhere though that he was originally a sibling to a character called Hester, but this was later changed and he somehow became a sibling to someone else 🤔

Sorry if that came across as arrogant, it certainly wasn't meant to.

I'm absolutely not criticising anybody at all for not getting the pun in the first place, if the words wouldn't sound the same in their accent, hence it wouldn't occur to them that there was a pun - and in my defence, that reply was to a PP who was rather snotty and short with me and at least one other PP too.

My comment was aimed at the people - both those with and without a rhotic accent - who claim not to understand how anybody could possibly pronounce a word in any way that differs from how they pronounce it.

Most of us on here are from Scotland, Ireland, England, Wales and we share a lot of the same cultural references and communicate a great deal between ourselves - not least on MN - so, although somebody may pronounce something differently from you and/or you may not get the nuance/pun that works in their accent but not in yours, I simply do not buy the claims that one of us has no comprehension how another of us may pronounce a common word.

Just like I don't get that some people from southern England claim befuddlement at the very notion that many people from central and northern England call what they call 'lunch and dinner', 'dinner and tea' (respectively). Nobody is asking or expecting them to change the references that they use; just utterly disbelieving that they haven't ever come across this before and claim open-mouthed astonishment when they do.

It's hardly like, say, somebody from Tuvalu and somebody from Iceland trying to find a common cultural understanding or being able to communicate satisfactorily with each other.

...not that you actually hear people speaking and pronouncing words on MN, but you know what I mean!

Thanks for your reply @AConstipatedAccountantJustCantBudget. Appreciate it.

I’m a bit confused at this though,

My comment was aimed at the people - both those with and without a rhotic accent - who claim not to understand how anybody could possibly pronounce a word in any way that differs from how they pronounce it

Were people claiming that?
I don’t think they were?

However I am too weary to go back and re-read it all now (sighs of relief from everyone I know! 😉)

Spent some time with adult DD today as she was ill and wanted company, watched the second Jurrassic World movie. Dallas Doodah and Ryan Reynolds are exes and she manipulates him into a dangerous mission to save dinos. He says to her "just remember, if I die......you made me come" but the twinkle in his eye shows its a double entendre that I totally missed the previous two times I watched it!

Iirc, Wallace had a non rhotic accent, so no matter how many times he said the name, or where, it wouldn't have come across as a homonym to anyone with a rhotic accent.

Are you saying that someone with a rhotic accent wouldn't be able to tell that he was saying shorn and it sounded like Shaun?

I had to Google the scene.

Wallace: Ah, he looks okay to me. We'll call him "Shaun", eh? Come on, Shaun!

Imo, no, it would not be obvious to a lot rhotic speakers that he was implying "shorn" when he named the sheep Shaun. Does he say the word "shorn" at some point? If so then maybe some people would make the link. Otherwise, no, it just sounds like Shaun.

It depends on the situation.
If someone was shearing a sheep with clippers in hand and they said something like ‘I’ve just shorn this sheep’ yes, that would be easily understood because of the context.

I just watched a clip of the film too and though Shaun has clearly been shaved that’s the word that’s used in the storyline, shave, not shear or shorn (in the bit I saw anyway).
So when Wallace says after the shave ‘He looks ok, we’ll call him Shaun” it might occur to some rhotic speakers that it’s a word play, but it might easily not. More likely not I would think?

This would have been a fun thread if not for the arguments over how people with different accents hear shorn and shaun
🥱

OK, to try and turn it away from the accent controversy let me offer this. Not a joke but something I only realised this week at the age of 45. Looking through a guidebook to Belguim where I am heading for the weekend. Lots of useful phrases in Dutch. How odd, I thought. Why Dutch and not French and Flemish?

Flemish IS Dutch. I had no idea. I would have guessed it had a high degree of similarity but it's just the same language. Definitely a should have realised some years ago moment.

The Flemish / Dutch connection could open up a whole other argument 😆 and then you could also bring in Afrikaans!

Oops! I didn't think that through clearly! I have always th0ught of Afrikaans as another language also very similar to Dutch but not the same. Maybe on the boundary of what counts as a dialect and what is a separate language. That does sound controversial now.

There was a 1950s book my mum passed down to me that I loved about some schoolchildren foiling a gold smuggling plot on a school trip to Austria and one of them is able to understand the Dutch thieves because she grew up in South Africa and understands Afrikaans. She does consider them overlapping but different.

Can't remember the name of the book but I think it has one of those names that sounds accidentally rude in a jolly hockey sticks style.

That sounds like one of the storylines in the Chalet School stories!

I thought that @sharpclawedkitten - could it have been the chalet school, @DappledThings

No, definitely not a CS one. It was a standalone one. She's still got it so I've texted and asked her for the title. Will update if there's a response

I don't know how to pronounce rhotic and have never heard the word before, I don't think.

I think it is a brain wiring thing. If someone said I've shaved the sheep, let's call him Shaun I'd immediately know it is a play on shorn.

I am a Northerner, living in the south but moving back home next year. Can't wait to go back to speaking right for me.

But do you pronounce Shaun and shorn the same @JawsCushion? Because lots of people don’t and they’ll generally have more difficulty.

I do @Longrider

Mum came through with the memory! Then I found a version with the same cover on Google images.

I want to read that now!