...it's like TV Tropes, but LINKED DATA!
Accent Depundent
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It's been said that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America are two countries Separated by a Common Language. These days, that might truly be said of the entire Anglosphere. Despite the homogenising effects of mass media, different English-speakers continue to speak English differently. Some of the differences are: Pronunciation: Does "caught" sound like "court" or "cot"?note In Australia, New Zealand, Wales and most of England, "court" and "caught" sound the same but "cot" is different; in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Canada and some parts of the United States, "cot" and "caught" sound the same but "court" is different; in other parts of the United States, a few parts of England and Republic of Ireland, "cot", "caught" and "court" all sound different! Vocabulary: Are "chips" thin crunchy things you eat with dip, or long chewy things you eat with ketchup?note The former in America; the latter in Britain; both in Australia. Americans call the latter "fries", and Brits call the former "crisps." Spelling: Can "storey", as in "floor", be spelled the same as "story", as in "tale"?note Yes in the United States and Canada; no everywhere else. One of the consequences of this is that wordplay may not always work as well for one English-speaker as it does for another. Words that sound the same in London may sound very different in Bristol. Words that rhyme in England may not do so in Scotland. And a commonplace word in the United Kingdom may not even exist in the United States. This page is for puns, rhymes, and other forms of wordplay that work in some varieties of a language, but not in others. These typically involve forms of English spoken in different countries, but may also be accounted for by regional or class differences within a country. Moreover, English is not the only language with diverse forms: Québécois sounds very different from Parisian French, and Spaniards do not speak Spanish the same way Mexicans do. In order to belong here, all that's necessary is for a play on words to be comprehensible to one group of people who speak a language, and incomprehensible (or, at least, less obvious), to another group of people who speak the same language. Thanks to books, movies, and jet planes, most of us have some idea of how English is spoken in different parts of the world. If you're looking for more information, check out this page for a concise break-down of the pronunciation differences between some of the major English accents. See also the American Accents, Australian Accent, British Accents, and Canadian Accents pages. Examples are listed by country of origin. |
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Most Americans didn't get that Arthur Christmas was supposed to be a pun on "Father Christmas", partly because the words don't rhyme in most dialects of American English, and partly because most Americans are used to saying "Santa Claus". | |
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Some of the puns in Horrible Histories Wicked Words are more easily understood in an English accent: This Spoonerism: "A cat popped out on its drawers". A joke that "Onomatopoeia" comes from "On a mat a pier". When discussing spelling mistakes: "The suspect was wearing a car key jacket."note khaki jacket "Where is your grammar?" "At home with my gran-da!" The book also mentions that in American English, the word "bum" means "tramp" (usually). This has a double meaning in itself Americans are more likely to recognise the word "tramp" as meaning "prostitute" rather than "vagrant". This trope is than lampshaded when the narration says that Americans will be confused if they hear that British people sit on bums, with a cartoon showing an American trying to sit on a homeless person in Britain. |
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WayneRadioTV: Like the Daily Show example above, the joke of the memetic "You have no caulk" clip comes from Wayne's accent exhibiting the cot-caught merger, making his pronunciation of "caulk" sound like "cock". | |
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In one episode of Lamb Chop's Play-Along, Shari teaches Lamb Chop about silent letters, and she use "poem" as the first example of a word with a silent letter, the "e." While this works in Shari and Lamb Chop's New York accent, it doesn't work in other accents that clearly pronounce the "e" in that word. Shari does acknowledge that the word can also be pronounced with an audible "e," though. | |
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In one episode of Shakespeare & Hathaway - Private Investigators, detective Frank Hathaway tells his assistant, Sebastian that he's sending him to a pawnshop as part of an investigation, and after an amused Sebastian readily agrees, Frank clarifies that he means a pawn broker. The joke is that Sebastian initially thinks Frank is sending him to a porn shop, hence Frank's need to clarify. This pun sort of works in American English (hence the show Pawn Stars), but works a lot better in British English, in which the two words are homophones. | |
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Slick Rick's song "Children's Story" has the line "Ran up the stairs up to the top floor / Opened up the door there, guess who he saw?", which relies on the rapper's non-rhotic accent. | |
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The Vicar of Dibley provides a Visual Pun in a game of charades that only works with certain British accents. Alice is standing there with a pair of jars in her hands. The other players have worked out that it's a movie but give up. She says it's Jars, which she says she's never seen but is about "these giant jars that attack people". The others realize she's talking about Jaws and give a Lame Pun Reaction. | |
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Similarly to the example given above, the titular pun in The Simpsons episode "The Crepes of Wrath" makes little sense to anyone who pronounces "crepe" as "crep" (as the original French word crêpe is pronounced). | |
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Full House: Stephanie and Michelle board an imminently departing airplane so Stephanie can flirt with a handsome young New Zealander. Since she thinks that the boy just told her that the plane is going to Oakland (across the bay from their San Francisco home), she is not particularly concerned about getting off before takeoff. Cue the flight attendant announcing that they're on a 14-hour flight to Auckland, New Zealand instead. The rest of the episode revolves round them getting back to the USA. | |
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In another Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Joseph tells the Pharaoh "All these things you saw in your pyjamas"/Are a long-range forecast for your farmers" -– a dead giveaway that the show is British in origin, which becomes a very Painful Rhyme in a rhotic accent. | |
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In Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island, Speedy Gonzales tells Daffy Duck that he's spotted "two ships". Due to Speedy's Mexican accent and his own hunger-induced insanity, Daffy thinks he said "two sheeps". | |
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In Wreck-It Ralph, Vanellope's "duty"/"doody" pun only works in an accent that exhibits both flapping and yod-dropping; in non-flapping and/or non-yod-dropping accents, the two words aren't homophonous. | |
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A popular post on Tumblr joked "at the goth bbq eating corn on the macabre", to much amusement from US Americans. As many US dialects pronounce "macabre" to sound like the name "McCobb" or "muh-cahb" (/məˈkɑb/), this was a great pun as it sounds a lot like "corn on the cob" (cahb, /kɑb/). The joke baffled other English speakers, such as British people (and a number of other US Americans too), who pronounce it more like the original French, with an R at the end, something like "muh-cah-bruh" (/ˌməˈkɑ�.bɹə/), meaning the pun didn't so much fall flat as make no sense at all. | |
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Grand Theft Auto V has a jetski manufacturer named "Speedophile", a pun that only works with the British pronunciation of "pedophile". | |
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The Beano's Pansy Potter, the Strongman's Daughter. "Potter" rhymes with "Daughter" in Scotland, where the Beano's publishers DC Thomson are based, but not in the rest of Great Britainnote because Scotland has the cot-caught merger, but England and Wales don't. One story lampshades this, with other characters claiming that her title doesn’t rhyme, while she insists that it does. | |
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At the end of 1066 and All That, the authors report "history came to a." That's "full stop" in Britain but "period" in the United States. Possibly intentional, as it's a reference to the geopolitical supremacy of the United States. | |
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Yellow Submarine: The following pun only worked thanks to Ringo Starr's Liverpool accent: | |
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Arrested Development: The whole joke about Bob Loblaw's name is that it sounds like "bah blah blah", which only works in accents where "o" and "aw" sound similar. | |
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Calvin and Hobbes: Calvin writes for a homework assignment that lords and vassals lived in a "futile" system, only for Hobbes to point out that it's spelled "feudal". In American English, the two words are usually homophones, but it doesn't work if "futile" is pronounced as "few-tile". One of Calvin's poems rhymes "macabre" with "job", which only works in dialects that have the father-bother merger and drop the "r" sound (which is retained in British English).note And even dialects that do exhibit the merger often keep a separate "father"-type vowel for words that look foreign, like "macabre" or "balm", or for recent (or relatively-recent) loans from French or German, like "bra", "Mach", "Amish", or "Nazi". |
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In Only Connect the connection is sometimes that all the words sound like other words which are connected. Except that in many accents, even non-RP British ones, they don't. | |
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The name of Shaun the Sheep is much funnier in a non-rhotic accent, because it's a homophone for "Shorn the Sheep". | |
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In the Animaniacs episode "King Yakko," Wakko rhymes "friend" with "hand." This works okay in his mock-Liverpudlian cadence, but to his siblings it's a Painful Rhyme. | |
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"it.", the closing track of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis, features the lines "it is real/it is Rael," which rely on the heavily Anglicized pronunciation of Rael's name that Peter Gabriel uses throughout the album (ɹeɪl, identically to "rail"; the proper Spanish pronunciation is ɹäe̞l). | |
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Discworld: "Dark" and "clerk" rhyme throughout Britain. US readers, however, will likely be baffled. In Equal Rites, the Unseen University refuses to accept female students, arguing that it would be "against the lore". "Lore" and "law" sound identical in RP. A Double Subversion: Djelibeybi is a pun on the name of a British candy that was lost on Americans. So Pratchett created the nearby country Hersheba — which is equally lost on people who speak with a rhotic American accent. It can also be misinterpreted as having the stress on the second syllable, like "herSHEEba". The unofficial motto of Unseen University, "η β Ï€" (Eta Beta Pi) is described as sounding like "eat a better pie" or "eat a bit o' pie". To an American, the greek letters eta and beta are pronounced "AY-ta" and "BAY-ta," respectively, so while the pun can still start with "ate a", the middle part becomes nonsense, as "beta" doesn't really sound like any American-English word or series of words that could fit there (not to mention that many American accents are far less likely to drop "r"s from or add "r"s to the end of words). Casanunda is a pun on "Casanova", but this only works to someone with a non-rhotic accent, where the "ova" in "Casanova" is pronounced the same as "over". |
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The Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers episode "Rita's Pita" only works if those two words rhyme. | |
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The Muppet Show had an entire sketch centered around guest star Jim Nabors' thick southern accent, which included such jokes as: | |
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The Daily Show's Most Immature Montage Ever revolves around the fact that in cot-caught merging American accents, the word "caulk" (as in, the stuff you use to seal up cracks in your walls) sounds exactly like the word "cock" (as in... you know). The montage probably seems doubly immature in other English-speaking countries, where "caulk" doesn't sound at all like "cock", and may, in fact, be a homophone for "cork". | |
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Grand Theft Auto: Grand Theft Auto V has a jetski manufacturer named "Speedophile", a pun that only works with the British pronunciation of "pedophile". A few games feature a trucking company called "RS Haul". This is a pun on the British word "arsehole" that doesn't work if you pronounce it as the American "asshole". |
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Knots and Crosses, the first novel in Ian Rankin's Rebus series, is intended as a pun on "noughts and crosses". This works in Scottish accents, which have undergone the cot-caught merger making "knot" and "nought" homophones, but not in the rest of Great Britain, which does not have this vowel merger. | |
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The background music for one of the official trailers of Turning Red, is *NSYNC's "It's Gonna Be Me", which can be misheard as "It's gonna be Mei" (i.e. the main character). Pretty much invoked with a line edited from "You might been hurt, babe" to "You might been hurt, Mei". | |
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An unintentional example: Dinosaucers has the word "dinosaur" in the title if pronounced with a non-rhotic accent (Dinosaur-cers), but the narration is done in a rhotic accent, where the pun doesn't appear. | |
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Robots and Empire has one about accents of different planets: | |
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The Goes Wrong Show, in the episode "90 Degrees", has the British characters in a Southern Gothic-esque play and attempting the accent. They have an extended joke about confusing a request for beer with a statue of a bear...despite the fact that "beer" is pronounced precisely the same way as in British English in all varieties of American English, and it only sounds similar to "bear" here because of their (deliberately) awful attempts at a drawl. | |
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In the Big Finish Doctor Who story "Bloodtide", the Sixth Doctor makes a pun that relies on "tortoise" sounding like "taught us", which only works in a non-rhotic accent. | |
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Banjo-Tooie: Sergeant Jamjars' rhymes only work when saying the letter Z as "Zed" instead of "Zee". | |
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Harry Potter: Rita Skeeter is a lot more fun to say in non-rhotic varieties of English (in which the two words rhyme) than in rhotic accents (in which they don't). "Spello-tape" is a play on "Sellotape"note short for "cellophane tape", a proprietary eponym popular in the U.K. and other countries, but not in North America, where the same product is generally referred to as "Scotch tape" or simply "tape". To add to the confusion, scotch tape is something else in the UK, and tape may well be a cassette. Diagon Alley is a play on the word 'diagonally', but this is missed by many non-UK readers; for example, the 'ally' in 'diagonally' and the noun 'alley' sound nothing alike in American English. Knockturn Alley is a play on 'nocturnally', which is missed for the same reason. The films make the pun a little clearer, particularly in Chamber of Secrets, when Harry mispronounces Diagon Alley as "diagonally" (though with the Accent On The Wrong Syllable) while using the Floo Network. The sorting hat's song in the fifth book rhymes "Gryffindor" with "Ravenclaw" twice. This works perfectly well in non-rhotic accents (like most accents of J. K. Rowling's native England), but not at all in rhotic accents (like most American accents). |
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Several puns in Myth Adventures depend on the reader hearing "ah" as an "o" sound (Klahd, Aahz, Jahk as "clod", "oz", "jock"). This works in most North American accents due to their father-bother merger, which merges these two sounds, but is lost on readers from elsewhere in the English-speaking world where the two vowel sounds are always kept separate. | |
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Kath & Kim frequently speak of their desire to be affluent — which, in a broad Australian accent, sounds very similar to "effluent". | |
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In Equal Rites, the Unseen University refuses to accept female students, arguing that it would be "against the lore". "Lore" and "law" sound identical in RP. | |
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In The Pirates of Penzance there is a rather lengthy joke in which different characters confuse the word "orphan" for the word "often." Needless to say, this doesn't come across in any accent besides very proper British English and some traditional Northeastern U.S. accents, and even then is a stretch. | |
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Accent Depundent | |
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Seinfeld: The final joke of the episode "The Junior Mint" depends upon rhyming "Dolores" with "clitoris". This only works in certain regions of the US where the emphasis is on the second syllable ("cli-TOR-is") rather than the first. | |
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An inverted example. In The Lord of the Rings one of Sam's relatives is "Halfast Gamgee"note The "cousin Hal" who saw a "Tree-man" walking on the northern moors. American commentators suggested this was a pun drawing attention to the character being a little bit of a dolt to his Shire neighbours. British readers went "huh?" as they couldn't see it (Halfast = Half-assed), since J. R. R. Tolkien and other Brits would probably say "half-arsed" instead. Though Tolkien does make that joke — with the name of Sam himself — 'samwise' meaning "half-wise" in Old English. In fact, LOTR is stuffed with obscure philological puns which go right over the heads of readers who don't have Tolkien's level of expertise. |
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In The Sound of Music, Maria's song "Do-Re-Mi" teaches musical notes using homophones for the syllables. The line for "Fa" is "Far, a long long way to run", which relies on non-rhoticity (the lyricist was Oscar Hammerstein II, who had a non-rhotic New York accent). The original production had Maria played by Mary Martin, who had a rhotic Texas accent, but still pronounced "far" as intended. The film adaptation had her played by British actress Julie Andrews, whose accent naturally works for the line. | |
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Accent Depundent | |
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From My Fair Lady: Invoked in the song "Show Me", where one of the couplets ("Haven't your arms Hungered for mine?/Please don't explain, Show me!") only rhymes if Eliza briefly slips back into her Cockney accent (where "explain" is pronounced "expl'ine"). Another curious example occurs in the song "The Street Where You Live", when Freddy sings the line, "People stop and stare, they don't bother me / For there's nowhere else on earth that I would rather be". The rhyme would completely fail in American English, where "rather" rhymes with "gather". Fortunately, Freddy is singing the Queen's English, in which "rather" rhymes with "father". They rhyme still fails in British English, because of the distinction that Brits (and, indeed, most English speakers outside North America) make between the short "o" of "bother" and the long "a" of "father". However, most Americans make no such distinction (except for the traditional Boston accent): for them, "father" and "bother" are a perfect rhyming pair!note This conflation, known as the "father-bother merger", is one of the distinguishing features of North American English. So the rhyme works — but only if it's said by a Brit and heard by an American. |
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The first season of 30 Rock features Jenna working on a small film called "The Rural Juror", with a running gag that nobody can work out what "rerl jer" means. The joke only works for rhotic American dialects, where it is pronounced "RER-uhl JER-er" (collapsing to "rerl jer"), and not for accents where it's pronounced "ROO-ruhl JOO-rer" (or "JOO-ruh" for accents that drop the R). | |
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: The Mock Turtle's line, "We called him 'Tortoise' because he taught us!". With a non-rhotic accent (like most accents of England), "tortoise" is pronounced "TAW-tus", sounding virtually the same as "taught us". This pun also works in r-dropping American accents, such as a Brooklyn accent (as demonstrated by at least one community radio theater adaptation). | |
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In the musical of Matilda, "School Song" features words which sound like letters of the alphabet in order (e.g. "I have suffered in this jail I've been trapped inside this cage for ages, This living 'ell") and ends with the warning about how Miss Trunchball teaches "Phys-ed", which works in most English-speaking countries but not in the United States, where the letter Z is called "zee" instead of "zed". Also, the word used for R is "asked", which doesn't work in any rhotic accent or, for that matter, in the north of England. | |
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Courtney Act from season 6 of RuPaul's Drag Race is from Australia and admits that her Punny Name only really works in Australian English, where it sounds like "Caught in the act." To make the pun more obvious Ru introduces her using a fake Australian accent. | |
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The Lion King: In the song "Be Prepared", Scar's line "A shining new era / is tiptoeing nearer" is dependent on Jeremy Irons' non-rhotic English accent; additionally, "era" is pronounced with a short "e" in many North American accents. | |
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Shrewdolph, the name of the giant light-up reindeer which appears outside the Darwin Shopping Centre in Shrewsbury, England each Christmas, is a play on Rudolph, as in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. However, the pun only works if the town's name is pronounced "Shroosbury", with the first syllable sounding like the name of the small rodent, rather than "Shrosebury". | |
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To Americans, World War Z is an obvious pun on "World War 3". English speakers from any other country won't get it instantly. To them, it would be "World War Zed". | |
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Hot Shots! Part Deux: Some merchandise was advertised in a home video version of the film, with the narrator mispronouncing "Deux" with an American Accent to sound like "dew" (or "do"). One of the merchandise had the writing "Just Deux it!", while it was pronounced "Just do it!". | |
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In The Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion's assertion that Courage "puts the ape in apricot" only works if you pronounce it "APE-ri-cot" instead of "AP-ri-cot". "We're Off to See the Wizard" repeatedly rhymes "does" with "was" and "because." These are perfect rhymes in most of North America, but not in most other places. |
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Doctor Dolittle: The song "Talk to the Animals" includes the line "If people asked me, 'Can you speak rhinoceros?' / I'd say, 'Of courseros!'" This is obviously a less Painful Rhyme in Rex Harrison's non-rhotic British accent than it would have been in a rhotic accent. | |
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In Cars: Mater's declaration that his name is 'Mater, like Tow-Mater, but without the 'tow'' only works if the audience is used to pronouncing 'tomato' as 'tuh-mater' or 'tow-mater'. | |
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The Two Ronnies: In the Four Candles/Fork Handles sketch, a customer at a hardware shop (who sounds like he comes from one of England's more rural counties) asks for "fork 'andles". The shopkeeper hands him four candles, thinking this is what he wants, but the customer then clarifies that he wants "fork 'andles — 'andles for forks note as in garden forks." The rest of the sketch is based around the customer asking for various items and the shopkeeper misunderstanding what he wants, with the shopkeeper eventually becoming exasperated and accusing the customer of "having him on". At one point, the customer asks for "O's" (the letter), and the shopkeeper thinks he wants either "hoes" or "hose", which only works because the customer drops his H's. | |
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Related to the nacho joke above. In Sam and Max Season 1, Bosco's Incovenience has a poster for Not'chos. | |
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When King Lear's Fool says "Sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace", this is a pun on how in 17th Century English "peace" sounded the same as "piss". | |
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Accent Depundent | |
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In Les Misérables, with its English-language libretto written by the British lyricist Herbert Kretzmer (although the original libretto by Alain Boublil was in French), Thénardier sings ''Master of the house, doling out the charm/Ready with a handshake and an open palm." In a non-rhotic British accent this is a perfect rhyme, but in a rhotic accent it becomes a Painful Rhyme. | |
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In Little Women, the March sisters call their mother "Marmee," which the adaptations usually have pronounced with a standard rhotic American accent that voices the "r". But the characters' 19th century New England accents would actually have been non-rhotic, so "Marmee" was just Louisa May Alcott's distinctly New England way of writing "Mommy," which didn't have a codified spelling at the time. Likewise, little Daisy and Demi Brooke's childish pronunciations of "Mama" and "Papa" are written as "Marmar" and "Parpar," which sound much stranger when read with a rhotic accent than with Alcott's non-rhotic accent. | |
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Mock the Week: "Hello, I'm Sue Barker. You may remember my father, Chewbacca." | |
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Pokémon: A few English monster names are like this. The Ghost-type Gastly, for example, loses the pun on "gas" in regions that pronounce it /gɑ�stli/ ("GAHST-ly"). Porygon-2's evolution is not Porygon-3, but rather Porygon-Z in reference to its glitched state. Notably it explicitly uses the latin alphabet symbol "Z" as opposed to "ゼット", as that would be pronounced "zetto". |
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The English fan translation for Mother 3 makes a brief quip about a sparrow's fluency in game lingo being "rarrow", before correcting itself to "rare". This gag makes no sense to accents without the Mary-marry-merry merger. | |
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Apollo 440's song "High on Your Own Supply" has the lyrics "You gave it no quarter, now you're treading water, bartender rang time, it's too late for last orders". "Quarter" and "water" only rhyme in a non-rhotic accent, and neither rhyme with "order" unless the speaker flaps the t sound to make it sound like d. | |
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The Killer Angels. A Union soldier asks an imprisoned Confederate soldier why they are fighting. The Union soldiers are confused because the Confederates say it's for their "rats" (rights). | |
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VeggieTales: The episode entitled "The Grapes of Wrath" features a family of very angry grapes. At the end of the episode, they decide to forswear their choleric ways and turn to academic pursuits, renaming themselves the Grapes of Math. The rhyme is a stretch in varieties of English where "wrath" is pronounced "rahth", and completely fails in the U.K. where the appropriate word is "maths". Another episode is called "The Wonderful Wizard of Ha's"note As in "Ha-ha-ha!". "Ha's" and "Oz" rhyme in non-Bostonian American English, but would make a queer pairing almost everywhere else. |
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In GRID Legends, one of the missions in story mode following a character named Yume Tanaka is called "Yume Proceed", based on how in English, the name "Yume" is pronounced as "you-may", so it sounds like "You may proceed". This may be lost on those who know the pronunciation of Japanese names (or simply non-English speakers), as an actual Japanese would pronounce Yume as "you-meh". | |
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Winnie the Pooh: It's far from obvious to many Americans that Eeyore was named after the sound a donkey makes (eee-aww = hee-haw). Christopher Robin's line "He's Winnie-ther-Pooh. Don't you know what 'ther' means?" The spelling is supposed to represent the word "the" as it would be pronounced in Pooh's name ("thuh", as opposed to "thee"). To readers with rhotic accents, this is much more difficult to understand. |
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The IT Crowd: In one episode, Jen is dating a man who is almost perfect except that his name is Peter File, which in British English sounds almost exactly like "paedophile." Moss even points out that the problem wouldn't exist if they were in America (where the first vowel is a short rather than long "e"). You can also notice Chris O'Dowd's Roy phrasing it slightly strangely, because the joke doesn't work in an Irish accent either. | |
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This exchange from the Wallace & Gromit film The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which depends on Lady Tottington's very posh RP accent. | |
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Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker contains a joke where the characters nickname Big Boss 'Vic Boss' (short for 'victory') due to him being The Ace. This works a lot better in the Japanese pronunciation of English loanwords (where there is no distinction between 'b' and 'v') than in the American English the characters are actually supposed to be speaking, making it come across in the English translation as bizarre. At one point in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Big Boss howls "Ocelot!!" at the character in question, in a way intended to be the exact same manner that Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty yelled "Liquid!!". Hideo Kojima points out in the director's commentary that it works so well because the names even rhyme (O-se-ro-to, Ri-ku-i-do). In English, though... |
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At one point in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Big Boss howls "Ocelot!!" at the character in question, in a way intended to be the exact same manner that Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty yelled "Liquid!!". Hideo Kojima points out in the director's commentary that it works so well because the names even rhyme (O-se-ro-to, Ri-ku-i-do). In English, though... | |
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Ukraine's 2007 Eurovision Song Contest entry, "Dancing Lasha Tumbai", caused some controversy as 'Lasha Tumbai' sounds like saying 'Russia Goodbye' in a Ukrainian accent. | |
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In Haroun and the Sea Of Stories, Haroun meets the "Plentimaw" fish, who have plenty of maws, i.e. mouths. This is a play on the saying "There are plenty more fish in the sea," but only works in non-rhotic varieties of English, where "maw" is a homophone for "more". | |
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Heaven 17's "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang" fits the line "history will repeat itself" within seven notes, a move which is only possible in British dialects like Glenn Gregory's, which pronounces "history" as "hɪs.tɹɪ" rather than "hɪs.t(ə).ɹi." | |
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The Doctor Who serial "The Gunfighters" plays off "Doctor Holliday" and "the Doctor's holiday" in order to fuel some of the misunderstandings that power the plot. The British English use of the word 'holiday' means taking a trip somewhere, or time off. In American English, a 'holiday' refers to special dates like Christmas or New Year and time off would usually be called a 'vacation'. Possibly justified as the only British English speakers in the story are the Doctor and his companions, explaining why the Americans begin to assume the Doctor is Doc Holliday. | |
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In Duck Soup, Chico's pun that confuses "Dallas, Texas" with "dollars, taxes" is dependent on his mock-Italian accent. | |
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Need for Speed (2015) has several events with a torque/talk pun in their names, with one example being "Torque Of The Town". They don't work well with rhotic accents (i.e. most American, Canadian, Scottish and Irish accents). | |
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Jurassic Park: Tim's joke "What do you call a blind dinosaur? Do-you-think-he-saurus". "Saurus" and "saw us" sound the same in a non-rhotic accent with linking r. However, the pun isn't supposed to work perfectly anyway since Tim doesn't speak with such an accent. | |
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Eddsworld: "Beaster Bunny", the first proper episode headed by Matt Hargreaves, opens with show Matt complaining about Tom's car... but pronounced in Edd's accent, it sounds like "TomSka", aka the previous showrunner, and the complaints are criticisms of Ridgewell's management phrased as criticisms of a vehicle. | |
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QI has Stephen Fry jokily responding to Rich Hall talking about his aunt with "I didn't know you had an ant." Since in Fry's Received Pronunciation accent "aunt" is pronounced "ahnt", Hall's American pronunciation of the word sounds like "ant" to him, and viewers from Southern England. | |
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In Jeopardy!, there are often categories like "Rhymes with BOT", and several of the correct responses in the category only work if you have the caught-cot merger. | |
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Fallen London contains a quest where the player character finds out that ravings they took for "Heifer star" actually refer to a woman named "Hephaesta". '-a'/'-ar' only sounds the same in non-rhotic accents, like the Cockney and RP the characters are presumably speaking. | |
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Coach Z of Homestar Runner tends to make rhymes with his bizarre fictional accent. For instance, in the Strong Bad Email "rampage", he rhymes "sport" with "The Cheat" (which he consistently pronounces as "The Chort"). | |
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In Watchmen, Detective Fine initially believes that an "anonymous tip," is a Prank Call after the caller tells him where to find a "raw shark." After a second, Fine realizes that the caller is actually giving the whereabouts of notorious fugitive and Vigilante Man Rorschach. This verbal misunderstanding works in writer Alan Moore's Northampton accent, but doesn't quite hold up with an American accent in New York City, where the comic is set. | |
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The opening number of Jesus Christ Superstar rhymes "Fire" with "Messiah", which only works if you're Epic Rocking. "FI-yah!" | |
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Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator: The President of the United States is unusually fond of knock-knock jokes and name puns, but one of them—saying "Courteney one yet?" to a chief of police—does not work in most American accent (it is meant to sound like "caught anyone yet"). | |
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A gag in Family Guy has Peter told that "mom" is on the phone, and eagerly mutters to himself "Please be Somerset Maugham!" The words only sound the same in some dialects of American English (those with the cot/caught merger); in the UK the joke is further obscured by the fact that "mom" is spelled/pronounced "mum" (as it is pronounced [but not written] in the traditional Boston accent of U.S. English), though Eagleland Osmosis makes up for that. Another one, where Lois suggests that Brian join up with PETA, which sounds exactly the same as the way she pronounces Peter's name in her thick New England accent. |
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The "zee" pronunciation is begrudgingly used for Dragon Ball Z, ZZ Top and Jay-Z, though.note Incidentally, "Dragon Ball Zed" is actually closer to the Japanese title which is technically "Dragon Ball Zetto". | |
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Mario Party DS: A minigame in the game is called "Twist and Route". The pun on "Twist and Shout" is lost in regions that pronounce route like "root". | |
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In the audio commentary to The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson jokes that orcs should not be confused with people from Auckland. Cue head-scratching from North American, Scottish and Irish viewers and groans from most othersnote In non-rhotic accents, i.e. most accents of New Zealand as well as Australia, South Africa, England and Wales, "Auckland" would sound like "Orc land" due to the "r" being dropped from the latter. | |
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In the English translation of "Silent Night", the lyrics go "Glories stream from heaven afar / heavenly hosts sing Alleluia", which worked in the non-rhotic New York accent spoken by translator John Freeman Young but not in most other American accents. (However, it's worth noting that many people trained to sing in a classical style, such as in a choir or in Opera, are taught to not sing the final rhotic sound in words that end with "R", because it sounds "smoother" and makes it easier to hold notes. Since "Silent Night" is a religious song popularized during the Victorian era, it's commonly sung in a classical style reminiscent of church choirs.) | |
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Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby offers a jargon-dependent joke when Gormsby calls himself an "utter relief teacher". Since what New Zealanders (and Australians) call a "relief teacher" is a "substitute teacher" in North America and a "supply teacher" or "cover teacher" in Britain, the joke is lost. | |
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A classic American reclining chair, as seen in Frasier, loses some of its ring outside the US. "La-Z-Boy" only makes sense in American English. In other English speaking countries it would be "La Zed Boy". Weird name. What's it meant to mean, then? The "zee" pronunciation is begrudgingly used for Dragon Ball Z, ZZ Top and Jay-Z, though.note Incidentally, "Dragon Ball Zed" is actually closer to the Japanese title which is technically "Dragon Ball Zetto". |
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Some of James Roberts' wordplay and puns in the comic The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye work better in his native English accent than in an American accent (unless one speaks an r-dropping American accent). For example, the Duobot twins are named Shock and Ore, which only becomes a pun if "ore" is pronounced the same as "awe." | |
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Weebl's Stuff: In "Giraffe In My Loft", the singer states that the giraffe "Wears my chimney for a scarf / Oh giraffe, you're having a laugh!", which only works in a non-rhotic accent that pronounces "laugh" with a long a. "Fat Santa Claus" rhymes "Claus" with "floors", "doors" and "course", which is dependent on the singer's non-rhotic accent. "Magical Trevor : Episode 02" rhymes "saw him" and "adore him", which relies on an accent with linking r. |
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.
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