WHAT’S THE MOST CONFUSED AFRICAN ANIMAL? ‒ THE BEWILDERBEEST
What’s so funny about this? As you may or may not know, this animal has two names, wildebeest and gnu. The former is from Afrikaans, a language related to Dutch spoken now by descendants of Dutch colonists in South Africa. If you look at the word carefully, you won’t be surprised to learn that it means “wild beast”. The other name for this large African antelope is gnu, spelled g-n-u, but pronounced with a silent G, making it sound like a homophone of new, n-e-w, and a really easy word for making puns. Gnu is a word which is a Dutch attempt to sound like the Bushman language word for the animal. The word is made with a click which doesn’t exist in European languages, so they spelled it with a G, I guess to symbolize the click. It might sound like this (click-nu). If this is confusing, imagine how the animal feels. That’s why the joke calls it the most confused animal in all of Africa. If you add the prefix BE to wildebeest, the word sounds very much like bewilder - beast, bewilder meaning to confuse, to lead astray, to lead into the wild or into the wilderness. I know, this is all g-nus to you. And THAT’s what’s so funny!
This joke came from thepunsters on tumblr.com
(You can listen to an audio of this post at audioboo.com)
