Saturday, July 13, 2013

A black joke..? huh? - Katakana English

Hey everyone, today while I was at work I heard my co-workers talking in Japanese and they used a Katakana English word in their conversation. I was kind of shocked because they said black joke.

Now, from they context I could see they meant a kind of dark joke about death or some other horrible event. BUT in English a black joke meands a racist joke about black people!

It is not politically correct and not funny. I told my coworkers they should have used a different expression because people may get offended if they hear you saying black joke... instead use one of the three following terms

black humor


Whenever something bad happens I also use black humor to lighten the mood.

dark humor


Tom has a really dark sense of humor, he's always joking about death and other tragedies.

gallows humor


This is when people make jokes about death before a coming battle, execution(gallows are the execution platform for hanging) or other terrible event happens.

So tomorrow we all lose our jobs when the factory closes, I guess it is time for some gallows humor...

Be careful guys! Sometimes katakana English can be misunderstood and get you in trouble~!

Phil

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