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"I had a conversation with one of my friends the other day, he brought up something that’s been bothering him for a long time. He is a big fan of American TV series but he doesn’t know how to use phrases and slangs in those TV series when he finds it really hard to laugh at their jokes. For example in one episode in the Big Bang Theory, where all the audience are laughing at one of Sheldon’s classic “Bazinga!”, he spent the entire afternoon on dictionaries to look up the word and found nothing which , in his words, are a FUBAR. LOL Actually I kind of get his point. And I told him it’s not that big a deal. Bazinga comes from the famous classic video game Puzzle Bobble,which means gotcha, it pops out every time in the middle of the screen when you fail to erase the bubbles, Sheldon creates the word to lighten the atmosphere. Even many American guys don’t get what it means the first time they hear it. The point is this is the funniest part, you hear new words form a movie or TV series that makes you wonder what it means and you learn more than just a word when you eventually find out the story behind it.
Believe it or not , most people can’t handle their spoken English well because they are being insensitive to humor and to life. They are being insensitive to laugh at jokes. In fact, American jokes have many things in common with the ones we enjoy in China( just look at your hilarious Wechat emoticons). American humor concerns aspects of culture and history as ours do, it’s distinguished by its common type of humor: physical comedy, slapstick, exaggeration and imitation.Whether an individual finds something humorous also depends on the geographical location and level of education.
Anyway, if you ever meet American guys and want to blend in their conversation, it’s never wrong to bring up a joke by mocking yourself, but don’t make jokes about their own culture or their accent or even skin tone."


前几天我跟个朋友聊天，他说他有个困扰，看美剧的时候经常会被里面的段子还有笑话搞懵，因为他根本不知道是什么梗。比如我推荐的生活大爆炸里面经常会出现谢耳朵经典的“Bazinga!”美剧里有笑声的配音但是他花了整个下午用字典查这个词，然并卵，膝盖中箭怒气冲天。理解归理解，但是我跟他这么说的：出现这种问题很正常，因为你没有生活在美国社会，不了解他们的文化。Bazinga其实来自于一款经典游戏泡泡龙，意思是逗你玩，别说你，很多美国朋友第一次听都蒙，只是觉得这歌词很cute，但是也不知道什么意思，结合上下文连猜带蒙才知道是gotcha的意思。很多朋友说不好英语，或者说用美剧学不好英语是因为他们缺乏发现“梗”的观察力，因为你自己是个无聊的人，所以你对生活有趣的事情缺少发现，所以语言方面你会没有太多运用的动机。我觉得你要想学好语言，必须先努力让自己变成fun guy，至少我是个fun guy，而这也是我不断发掘英语发掘美国人思维模式的动力，because I think it’s fun to talk,it’s fun to share, it’s fun to show yourself!
其实如果你懂美国式的幽默，你会更容易喜欢美剧，有更多的动力去自己发现美式英语与美语思维模式的“秘密”。不用担心，其实中国人的幽默跟美国幽默还是非常相似的，因为美国是个移民国家，华裔人口不在少数，亚洲文化成功融合成为了所谓美国文化（个人觉得你要是学俄语法语的的理解他们的梗会比较难，英国人的笑话也就是可能稍微有那么一点点不是那么热），不信你可以看看你微信里的自定义表情有很多搞笑的都是比较美式幽默的。美式幽默跟我们一样涉及文化跟历史，而且他的特点非常明显：肢体动作，闹剧，夸张还有就是模仿。美国这么大，有些地区的joke在别的地区也不一定好笑，所以幽默这东西还跟受教育层次还有地域有关。
对了，如果以后你跟美国朋友聊天，想要融入进去，be a fun guys 是很重要的。每个人都喜欢fun guy对吧，讲点笑话，如果不知道怎么讲就自嘲不过最好不要拿美国文化还有口音甚至是肤色开玩笑。

就打这么多吧，have fun！

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