Warum Nicht Sind Sie Lachend?

Contrary to popular belief, Germans do have a sense of humor, as any native speaker can tell you. But translating English humor to German never seems to work, and the language itself may just be the reason. “At a rough estimate, half of what we find amusing involves using little linguistic tricks to conceal the subject of our sentences until the last possible moment, so that it appears we are talking about something else… But German will not always allow you to shunt the key word to the end of the sentence to achieve this failsafe laugh… The German language provides fully functional clarity. English humour thrives on confusion.”