Sometimes I'm a little slow

[andrewducker]

If you ask me "What does X mean?" then I can usually spot references, work out plots, etc.  But that part of my brain doesn't seem to engage automatically.

It took me, for instance, about four years to spot that Central Perk was a pun.

It also explains why I just wandered into the kitchen and spotted an ad for "Shaun the Sheep" on the back of Simon's Weetabix and realised that that was also a pun.

Comments

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

x=SQR(-x)

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

True when x = 0?

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

You gave me my first smile of the day!

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

ladysisyphus: Why is 'Shaun the Sheep' a pun?
mrmoonpants: ...'Shorn', maybe?
ladysisyphus: Oh, I bet it's funnier if you're Scottish.
mrmoonpants: Likely.

[andrewducker]

Oh, it's not a _good_ pun. And being in Scotland doesn't really help. Distinct lack of sheep in Edinburgh.

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but I bet the way you pronounce 'shaun' and 'shorn' is a lot closer than the way I pronounce them.

(Is this an excuse to use this icon over and over again? Maybe!)

[andrewducker]

Ooh, how do you pronounce them?

[ladysisyphus.livejournal.com]

The 'au' in Shaun gets flattened to a pure vowel sort of a -- like the first syllable in 'hallelujah', very drop-jaw. Any attempts at 'or' from my mouth come out one part 'o' and three parts 'r'. But this is South Texas speaking.

[andrewducker]

So you pronounce it like Sian?

[darkoshi]

How is Sian pronounced? Like Shawn, Shaun, and Sean? The vowel in those for me all rhymes with the vowel in blond, conned, Ronald, Bond, pawn... (although before I was familiar with the name, I used to think Sean was pronounced "seen" or "see-in"), and Shorn rhymes with born, corn, lore, fore, more... Not that that says much to someone who doesn't know who I pronounce the words. But the latter all have a definite r, whereas the former do not.

Who is Shaun the Sheep, anyway?

[andrewducker]

Sian is pronounced Sharn. That's the Irish for you :->

You don't want to know how Sioban is pronounced...

Shaun the Sheep is from Wallace and Gromit's "A Close Shave" and has since had his own spin-off:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_the_Sheep

[cybik.livejournal.com]

But Andy isn't Scottish..

Shaun and Shorn are almost identical when I say them, and my accent is pretty much bog standard southern English.

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

They are perfectly identical when I say them :)

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

not at all funny if you are Scottish. Or at least not if you are fro Glasgow and roll your 'r's where they DO exist and do NOT put them in where they don't.

"Shaun" and "Shorn" sound nothing like each other when I say them and thus it took me a coupla minutes to work that one out...

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

I concur, and had always thought it was an English-accent-only pun. Like the rhyming of "pork" and "fork".

[autodidactic.livejournal.com]

Shaun the Sheep is a bit of a stretch for my mouth. I tend to say it more like "shaaahn" than "shoooorn".

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah! I confess, I'd never noticed "Shuan" pun until now, and I'm still not convinced it's funny :)

And I'd never even noticed what Central Perk was called until Phoebe pointed it out, so I don't think that counts :)

I do have some anecdotes of learning exactly the same word in completely different contexts, and only much later bringing both definitions to mind at the same time and realising one was called after the other (possibly because I encountered all meanings only tangentially and while i was young, but enough to remember the word without examining the meaning): "Hornblower and the Atropos" and "Atropos, Lachesis and Clothos" and "Arsenal football team" and "Arsenal (a big royal building full of weapons)"

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

What about Ro-jaws and Hammerstein?

[andrewducker]

Took me a while - and I kicked myself when I spotted it. To be fair I started reading 2000AD when I was 12 :->

[19-crows.livejournal.com]

I tend to hear words as they're spelled, so I usually don't get puns, though I understand plays on words just fine. I consider this a plus.

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, so it is!