[Yswxomvy]

Marieke, I deleted my "who cares" comment.

LOL, didn't you know I have XRay vision?

But yes I do agree that knowing what makes different cultures laugh is interesting and possibly important. However, as soon as you start analysing a joke it inevitably loses the one thing that made it funny in the first place - sponteneity. Under normal circumstances I'd laugh at a joke spontaneously if I caught or enjoyed the humor. I would'nt analyze it, or go to the 'next level' unless I wanted to retell it.

( When I was enrolled in that seminar on humor, we were given a series of jokes. The normal course was to laugh at them candidly. That was the first level, to experience the jokes spontaneously. On the next level, we analyzed what types of jokes they were, why they were funny, and how to adapt them to different situations and audiences.

But I wouldn't call that a 'normal circumstance'. And how many people on earth would be interested in that kind of stuff? LOL)

It is an interesting topic because there seem to be profound differences between what is funny to (say) Americans and (say) British people. They both speak the same language (sort of) but laugh at completely different things. For example I am a Kiwi of British descent and can watch an American comedy programme on TV and see almost nothing funny in it, but a UK programme like "Fawlty Towers" will have me rolling on the floor. Why is that? Because over the last 150 years our cultures have been moulded by different social and ethnic forces. Does this mean that northern Thais laugh at differentr things from central or southern Thais? I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that it was so. I have seen some indication that urban Thais laugh at different things than rural Thais. I wish somebody knowleadgeable would enlighten us about Thai humor!