It's Official: Germans Least Funny in the World

But Americans aren't so amusing, either
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 7, 2011 2:05 PM CDT
Humor Survey: Germany Least Funny Country
The world doesn't seem to find Germany funny.   (Shutterstock)

Maybe something’s just lost in translation: A poll of 30,000 people in 15 countries found Germany to be the world’s most unfunny country. But we’re not so amusing either: Russia and Turkey came in as the second and third least-funny, while Britain and the US rounded out the top five. Responders said they saw Germany as being more interested in reason and efficiency than jokes.

“Germans are brilliant at so many things, including making cars and beating us at football. Unfortunately, telling jokes isn’t always one of them,” said a UK rep for social network Badoo.com, which ran the survey. But backers of German comedy say the country is plenty funny, notes the Telegraph—it’s just that the structure of the German language makes jokes hard to translate. (More Germany stories.)

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