Talk:Essay on a form of wit

There is a logical inconsistency here.

Regard the pun

Q:- When is a door not a door?

A:- When it's ajar! (a jar).

Pune was a Quirmian, and unless he was dealing all his life with Morporkian-speakers, would have used Quirmian as his first language. As Roundworld comic writer Miles Kingston[1] pointed out, puns don't translate well. Kingston - who chronicled the rise of the mangled part English, part-French "Franglais" language for humorous magazine Punch before its demise in the 1980's - rendered the joke into "Quirmian" [2] as follows:

Q:- Quand est une porte pas une porte?

R:- Quand elle est entre-baillée! (entre-baillée)

or:

R:- Quand elle est une marmite! (une marmite).

There's none of the "ajar / a jar" confusion here: "entre-baillée", meaning more or less "half-open", has no correspondence to "une marmite" (container for food, or small cooking pot).

ye gods, I could bang on about this sort of thing for, oh, 160,000 words...