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?!

I’m not saying you’re insular I’m actually saying that it will be hard to imagine. If you heard me say sauce you would still know what I meant and may not occur to you at the time it didn’t rhyme with source.
I don’t listen to my friends who do rhyme them speak and think to myself that they say that differently to me. It’s just how they speak and as we are both understood it just doesn’t occur to me at the time and the differences are something I only give any thought to when the conversation is specific to them like this one.

As a kid I watched cartoon network, and watched a cartoon called 'cow and chicken' only as an adult I thought back to the cows three dolls names - 'crabs, piles and manure' I knew what manure was but the crabs and piles went over my head and I can't believe how disgusting that was for a children's cartoon!

What does it stand for?

Indeed. I'm not Scottish, but I can see how this silly (but still makes me laugh!) joke would work in a Scottish accent:

Why did the handkerchief dance? Because it had a little boogie in it!

No, I wouldn't think it at the time, but I can play it back in my head now!

And the reason people can't hear the differences in sounds is because the way your brain is wired during childhood to listen to speech and is set by puberty. Which it is why it is hard to learn other languages as you get older and your brain loses its plasticity and you can't speak a different language without a strong accent and can't pronounce certain sounds in other languages. So e.g. loch is pronounced lock by English people and they can't roll their rs.

I always thought it was about a joke shop 😳

I know but where's the joke? I can't see a connection.

And you’re not at all prepared to accept that your own accent in your head may be filling in some gaps at all or creating a bias?

I thought that in her song Orinoco Flow, Enya was singing Save the Whale, and this is what I sing. Found out quite recently, that the words are Sail Away.

I only recently realised that the 90s song Ebenezer Good is about taking ecstasy (E's are good). Bit like Britney singing If You Seek Amy to mean F U ... etc.

And it’s sausage shaped

There is not just one Scottish accent just like there is not one English accent

In my Scottish tones cross and sauce absolutely do sound the same

Scousers routinely pronounce the 'ch' sound as in loch - they even do it when barely any other accent would, such as when saying lock!

I (along with many others) can do it perfectly well too if I want to (such as when pronouncing a Scottish or Welsh word), although it doesn't usually feature in my own (English) accent.

I can even pronounce Pwllheli properly!!!!!!

Dunno. Maybe, maybe not. Are you saying it's not possible that she doesn't say it the same way you do?!

I feel a voice note request coming on! 🤣

I know. But I still don't see any joke. Is there something about the word peperami I'm missing?

I know. That's my point! But apparently it's my internal bias meaning I think she doesn't say 'soss'! She probably does now, mind.

According to the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary sauce and cross are often pronounced the same (primary pronunciation in blue, secondary pronunciation in black) although cross has a slightly different pronunciation as its first option.

Well I never!

What ‘bit’ of an animal could be likened to a sausage?

Laugh and scarf rhyme in my southern accent

That wasn't my post.

This is what I posted:
Not in most English accents except cut glass RP. The B side of the orginal Teddy Bears Picnic record (1940s or 50s) had a song about birds that rhymed 'lawn' with 'gone' (gorn). I don't think anybody talks like that any more.

I realise Scottish and Irish accents are different.

I do a very sensible job and manage a team across the country. I don’t care how serious the meeting or conversation, if we are discussing numbers, I’m still doing it like The Count. It’s the only way. 😂

(Forgot to add the important info that the pronunciation given after the 2 little vertical lines is the American pronunciation 😅)

OK. English as spoken in England then.