A Family of Mice
Posted on | January 12, 2007 | 7 Comments
A family of mice was surprised by a big cat. Mother mouse opened her mouth and shouted, “Woof woof!” The cat got scared and ran away.
“What was that, Mum?” asked the youngest mouse.
“Well dear, I’ve told you how important it is to learn a second language.”
This is my all-time favourite language joke. I like the way it stresses the importance of knowing an additional language. I used the joke to open my Toastmasters speech #9, which I delivered in November last year. The objective of the speech was to persuade, and my topic was on language learning. I remember a few club members told me that they actually had the desire to pick up some languages after hearing my speech.
This joke has a variant which involves a dog getting a bilingual job. My boss has been recycling this joke so badly that our team has stopped laughing long time ago.
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- Cool language tool. Should become the next hit. Now they need more people joining. http://t.co/8YWZ9Wx
- Visiting Rio de Janeiro today and tomorrow.
- Just had an English/Spanish mixed conversation with a Skype friend for over an hour. We had not talked for more than 4 years.
- My last week in Sao Paulo.
- I find myself comfortably living in São Paulo within the 1st week, thx to the ability to understand the surroundings. http://t.co/UDkZA79
January 15th, 2007 @ 7:39 am
That’s funny! I have a cartoon about it. I will share it in my site soon
nice blog
January 15th, 2007 @ 7:55 am
[...] which seems to be so relaxing. I have read about the importance of learning a foreign language in one of the posts there. That’s funny. A family mouse is learning the language of the dog, so it saves the life [...]
January 15th, 2007 @ 10:27 am
Hi Osman, thanks for your comment. It is nice to know another language blog out there, especially from another non-English speaker. I personally don’t see many, perhaps because I am doing my search in English.
January 15th, 2007 @ 12:31 pm
i am also glad to know your blog. That’s lovely!
January 21st, 2007 @ 11:43 am
the first time I heard this joke was in the book “How to learn any language, of barry farber, and I told it to my sun, showing him the importance of learning other languages. This was important for him to begin to learn Spanish, besides Portuguese our native language.
January 21st, 2007 @ 1:39 pm
Renato, Thanks for your comment.
I have been wondering. I was once told that Spanish is the offical langauge in Brazil, but most Brazilians speak Portuguese. But Wikipedia says Portuguese is the only official language of Brazil. Which one is true?
January 27th, 2007 @ 7:23 pm
Wikipedia is correct, Brazil’s official language is Portuguese, because we were colonizided by Portugual, which also speaks Portuguese, as some countries in Afraca, as Angola, Mozambique, and also in Asia in Goa, Macao and East Timor.
All others South America countries, speaks Spanish (exceptions for French Guiana, Suriname and Guiana, they speak French, Dutch and English respectively.