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that this joke works seems to be a weird ambiguity of the English language. Do you know other languages where you can make this joke?

• jjk166 5y ago
  It works in any language where names are a property of objects. There may be some languages where names and adjectives are always explicitly handled differently, but amongst the biggest language groups this does not appear to be the case.
  • enriquto 5y ago
    Maybe I didn't understand what joke are you referring to... is the punchline an answer to "I'm hungry"? If that is the case, there is no name here. In all non-english languages that I know, this sentence has not the same form as "I'm Hungry". For example in French it is "J'ai faim" (literally "I have hunger"), in spanish it can be "Tengo hambre" o "estoy hambriento"; if it was a name it would have different grammar: "Je suis Faim" or "Soy Hambriento". In most romance languages it will be similar. How is it in Russian, Arabic, Chinese?
    • jjk166 5y ago
      There's nothing specific about hunger, it's just a common example. It's just a response to I am [descriptive adjective] where the adjective is deliberately misinterpreted as a proper name. So it could be "Hi tired, I'm Dad" or "Hi bored, I'm Dad" etc.