Thems iz Jokes

I made a joke in Armenian. Sort of. It wasn't really an Armenian joke or anything. But it was just me making an awful sort of pun in Armenian, just like I'd do in American. I made it one of my goals to be able to tell a good joke in Armenian, like set up, punchline and everything, though I really think that will be out of my grasp, and partly because I don't want to tell Armenian jokes. I want to tell one that I heard before, it's a joke that is told as a toast. It goes like this:

A man says a woman without a man is like a fish without water. An old woman replies, that isn't true, I have lived my entire life fine without a man. The man then replies, I wasn't talking about smoked fish.

Oh, Armenia . . .

So anyways back to this joke. I had to tell my director about a short weekend vacation I'd be taking to Tbilisi and say I'd be missing work on Friday while I traveled. I don't speak much Armenian at work because my counterpart can translate anything I need to say, and my work there with the English teachers and with English pedagogy so I don't have to use Armenian for my job either. So I go to tell my director about it, and when I come back my co-worker asksvonts asetsir? which literally means 'How you said?' or 'How did you say?' basically asking, how did it go or what did you say to him? So going with the literal Armenian one I said "Lezvov"which means "with [my] tongue." Lezu means tongue, and the -ov suffix is how you say 'with' or 'by' when talking about the instrument by which you do something. So she said, How did you say? And I said, with my tongue.

I actually made another joke, just today, it wasn't original, but, I guess I'm just on a roll with these bad jokes. So the door to my tatik in my building is cracked open, so I go and knock, and she invites me in. She gives me some boiled potatoes and her last piece of bread, her daughter forgot to bring some back today. The hospitality of Armenians are so amazing. I had a bunch of groceries with me, and she said, why oh why did you buy garlic, I have lots, and she held up a plastic bag full of garlic. She then made some coffee, with a lot of sugar in it. She kept asking if it was sweet and I told her it was very sweet. I told her I liked it, but that I usually prefer coffee without much sugar, and that I even prefer if darae which means bitter (you can ask if you want your coffee sweet or darae so I assume it means bitter, but I don't really know exactly how to translate it). She then immediately says Chigareli! which means "that isn't allowed!"

So I tell her, but grandma, you are so sweet already (Du es shat kakzer arten) why do you need to drink sweet coffee. She laughed, I'm not sure exactly how it translated, but in my mind it made perfect sense, and in America that's a common thing to say, oh you are so sweet (or bitter, or sour) so I don't need X sweet/bitter/sour thing.

And lastly, there's been a lot of snow lately, and something I've been seeing a lot is that Armenians whip out their umbrellas when it snows. So I see a lot of women walking around with umbrellas in the snow. So that's different. When I asked my co-worker about it, she said that Armenians don't like to wear hats. Yep.