Researchers from the University of Alberta in Canada and the University of Tübingen in Germany -- who probably should have noted in their paper that even though Tübingen is a real word and not a made-up one it is funnier than "Alberta" -- showed some 900 test subjects some of 6,000 made-up words that sound close to real words in order to see which ones were more likely to make them laugh.
They winnowed this list down by eliminating the obscenity sound-alikes because everyone has an inner 12-year-old that will snicker at them and showed those words to another group of test subjects. The words that were combinations of unlikelier sounds were funnier than the words that sounded more like real words. "Himumma" was deemed funnier by itself than "advical," for example, and while it is unlikely anyone has used "himumma" since Jackie Gleason departed this earth, I suspect that "advical" has actually been heard in a Joe Biden press conference.
In his interview with Quartz, the lead researcher invoked German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer -- and again, "Schopenhauer" is pretty funny for a word that's not made up -- who believed that humor involves not merely incongruity but unexpected incongruity.
And who wouldn't pay attention to thoughts on humor from this guy:
"humor involves not merely incongruity but unexpected incongruity."
ReplyDeleteThat's the situation most guaranteed to get a laugh out of me. I find things that shouldn't go together, but somehow do, very funny. I also like absurdity, which incongruity often veers over into.
One of the reasons I rarely laughed at Senfeld -- predictable at every turn.
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