A good joke can be the hardest thing to understand when people are studying a

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A good joke can be the hardest thing to understand when people are studying a foreign language. As a recent article in The Guardian noted，“There's more to understanding a joke in a foreign language than understanding vocabulary and grammar.”

Being able to understand local jokes is often seen as an unbelievable icebreaker for a language learner eager to form friendships with native speakers.“I always felt that humor was a ceiling that I could never break through，”Hannah Ashley，a public relations account manager in London，who once studied Spanish in Madrid，told The Guardian.“I could never speak to people on the same level as I would speak to a native English speaker. I almost came across as quite a boring person because all I could talk about was facts.”

In fact，most of the time，jokes are only funny for people who share a cultural background or understand humor in the same way. Chinese-American comedian Joe Wong found this out first-hand. He had achieved huge success in the US，but when he returned to China in 2008 for his first live show in Beijing，he discovered that people didn't think his Chinese jokes were as funny as his English ones.

In Australia，meanwhile many foreigners find understanding jokes about sports to be the biggest headache. “The hardest jokes are related to rugby because I know nothing about rugby，”said Melody Cao，who was once a student in Australia.“When I heard jokes I didn't get，I just laughed along.”

In the other two major English-speaking countries，the sense of humor is also different. British comedian Simon Pegg believes that while British people use irony（反话）一basically，saying something they don't mean to make a joke—every day，people in the US don't see the point of using it so often.“British jokes tend to be more subtle and dark，while American jokes are more obvious with their meanings，a bit like Americans themselves，”he wrote in The Guardian.

【小题1】It is implied in the noted sentence in Paragraph 1 that __________.

A．making jokes is a possible way for one to learn a foreign language better

B．humor is always conveyed to foreigners through vocabulary and grammar

C．vocabulary and grammar help you understand jokes in a foreign language

D．there tends to be something behind the words of a joke in a foreign language

【小题2】What can we learn about Hannah Ashley?

A．She thought that Spanish people generally did not have much of a sense of humor.

B．She believed that one had better rely on facts when speaking a foreign language.

C．She found that humor was a barrier to her to get along well with Spanish people.

D．She had a better command of Spanish language than English language.

【小题3】Joe Wong is used as an example to ___________.

A．suggest that there are cultural differences in humor

B．show that it's hard to put jokes into another language

C．prove that local people have different taste in humor

D．show that expressing ability affects the sense of humor

【小题4】From the text we can learn that ___________.

A．jokes about sports are difficult for all foreigners to understand

B．Americans are generally more humorous than British people

C．not all English speakers can understand English jokes easily

D．British people's dark jokes often make people uncomfortable

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