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Joke ova It’s all been a bit solemn here at Samizdata of late, so here’s an extremely silly final titbit from my Slovak holiday.
One of the oddities of Slovakia for the visiting Anglo is their rule of putting “ova” at the end of every non-Slovak female surname. Julia Robertsova. Meg Ryanova. Gwyneth Paltrowova. Odd, but you soon get used to it. One of these ovas did make me smile, however. The Harry Potter books are big in Slovakia, as everywhere, with all the same symptoms being displayed as in Britain. “When’s the next one out?” say the kids. “Well at least they’re reading something” say the elders. But consider what happens on all the book covers to the name of Harry Potter’s creator J. K. Rowling.
Well, I liked it.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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J.K. Rowlingova?
Let me draw a diagram:
x <--- joke
HHH
HHHHH <-- my head
HHHHH
HHHHH
HHH
HHHHHHH
HHHHHHHHH
Maybe it’s a British thing.
HUMOUR……………………? Humour indeed, you are aware there is a trade descriptions act in force in the UK? 🙂
Robin, Paul: read it out loud… as in ‘Rolling Over’.
I guess it must indeed be a ‘British thing’ cos I find it hilarious!
Hmm, note Robin’s and Paul’s attempts to be funny themselves…
It must be an ‘American thing’ to assume that just because they don’t get it, it can’t be funny. The joke is on them this time…
It must be a British thing cos I got it just fine… well, sort of British in a Irish sort of way
I think it’s a matter of accent. Among my short list of friends, family, and aquaintances the o in her name is (probably incorrectly) pronounced to rhyme with cow not snow. Further, to at least some American ears, the “ova” entirely lacks the “r” sound in “over” I think I’d have got it if it weren’t for the o thing though… I’ll have to remember to read Samizdata with my best approximation of a british accent.
John
Since MommaBear speaks Anglish ™, she had absolutely no problem seeing the chuckle.
OK, I get it. For some reason I had thought her name was pronounced ‘rau-ling’.
Nope I’m British (born in Cornwall) just ain’t my idea of humour 🙂
I forgot……..I did get it, right away, just don’t find it funny. (Don’t find Ben Elton funny either).
Heck, I’m a yank, and I got it right off the bat.
Was kinda funny, but not a coffee spewer…