KZBlog

As Kazakhstan Neweurasia points out in an article on humor in Kazakhstan, one popular and rather clever area of humor is finding pseudo-Kazakh roots in foreign words. I suppose one reason I love these jokes so much is that it acts as a welcome antidote to bad history that relies on linguistic coincidences.

One joke I love goes something like this:
“Did you know that the Garden of Eden was in Kazakhstan?”
“No. How do you know?”
“Well, how do you say ‘man’ in Kazakh?”
“Adam”
“Right, and how do you say ‘apple’ in Kazakh?”
“Alma”
“Right, and how do you say ‘don’t take’?”
“Alma”
“So, the first man was named Adam and the first words spoken were ‘Alma alma’!”

Neweurasia has some other good ones:

For example, two brothers Parakbai and Orakbai discovered Paraguay and Uruguay. Argyns (a large Kazakh clan of tribes) gave the name to Argentina. And the equator was named so because in the middle of ocean two warriors (eki batyrs) met in a deadly combat.

The most elegant joke, however, lies apart of geography. Jesters claim that karaoke, a Japanese invention, is based on two purely Kazakh words, which perfectly describe its principle: kara and oku, meaning “watch” and “read” respectively.