A number of years ago, I spent some time in Nigeria and when I asked one of the locals if there were any Nigerian comedians, he gave me a strange look. The whole idea was quite foreign to him. I then asked if he knew any jokes and after a moment, with more coaxing, he finally told me this one: A young boy is walking along the road with his father and sees a lion licking his rear end. He asks his father why the lion is doing this and the father replies. "He must have just eaten a Dutchman and he's trying to get the taste out of his mouth."

The humor in that joke depends on an understanding of the relationship between the Dutch and the native Nigerians, which is not completely convivial. In fact, the Nigerians harbor a good deal of resentment against the Dutch, especially the Ibo tribe who were poorly treated by them for many years.

The following excerpt distinguishes between humor and wit and talks about cross-cultural differences in what we see as funny. It also references an old comedy routine by Abbott and Costello. Before reading the rest of this document, listen to "Who's on First" (by clicking on the underlined title).

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from DO YOU SPEAK HUMOR? By John Simon (Esquire Magazine, September 12, 1978, pgs 83-84)

Is humor really a language? And if so, what kind? And is it truly universal? The effect of humor, laughter, is certainly universal; is its cause equally ecumenical? Would the majority of people the world over really find the same things funny? Some aspects of humor obviously depend on our familiarity with a given language…

Funniness, as well know, comes in two forms, wit and humor, and some of our best minds have toiled over defining the distinction between them. Rushing in where cooler heads might abstain, I would say that humor is basically good natured and often directed toward oneself…wit, on the other hand, is aggressive, often destructive (though, one hopes, in a good cause), and almost always directed at others. It would perhaps not be an excessive oversimplification to say that humor appeals to general masochism, whereas wit caters to general sadism."

Let's try a few examples of humor. Everyone knows the famous Abbott and Costello routine, "Who's on first?" This is a good specimen of vulgar but infectious humor-a little lower than the angels, but higher than a banana peel. Note that much of the comedy depends on obtuseness or at least misunderstanding, allowing the hearer to feel superior or, at worst, not inferior to the purveyors of such foolery. For something higher, consider Falstaff's1 remark, "I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men." That is a supremely humorous, rather than witty, line: first, because Falstaff, though funny, is not particularly witty-hence lack of self-knowledge on the part of the speaker that permits us to feel pleasurably superior to him; secondly, because Falstaff is jovially aware of his fatness and perhaps even folly as butts for jests-hence an admission of fallibility and further encouragement to us to condescend to it mirthfully.

Take, however, a maxim such as this one, attributed to (among others) William James: "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide people into two kinds, and those who don't." Is this humor or wit? On the surface, it is a benevolent and droll way of saying that all people posit such division, even the ones who, like the speaker, seem to be above such strategies. But this is also rather cleverly put, and the listener cannot help feeling (rightly) that the speaker knows what he is saying, namely, that even the listener is locked into a schema of two-way partitioning from which no one can escape-a threatening ideological confinement.

The sad truth of the matter is that people, as a rule, do not laugh at the same things.or at the same time…Many years ago, Danny Kaye(2), giving a talk at Harvard, was asked by a member of the audience which nation had struck him, on his extensive travels for UNICEF, as having the most outstanding sense of humor. Climing first that the were all alike, Kaye suddenly corrected himself and answered, "Yugoslavia." But when I later questioned him about the nature of this humoristic superiority, he was unable to define or even describe it."

Still, I believe that there exists a grammar of humor that could be universal but for two things: much of humor is wit, and wit rubs many more people than its direct object in the wrong way; and even humor, let alone wit, has , like any other language, illiterates unwilling or unable to learn its grammar and syntax.

(1) Falstaff is a character from Shakespeare's Henry IV
(2) Danny Kaye was a great American entertainer with a unique style. He was popular during the 1940's and 50's on the stage, television, in movies, and especially radio