3 types of English Jokes

How to understand the English humour

We wrote before about about English jokes in our short article ‘British Humour‘. We have been writing lately about English exams preparation and other topics related to English language learning. That’s why we thought it’s time to take a more light-hearted approach to our blog again. So, what do we find funny?

Mr Bean… Monty Python… Charlie Chaplin… Shakespeare… British humour is well known across the world, but what are the most common types of English jokes? And why are they funny? Let’s have a look at 3 popular types of English jokes.

1) ‘Knock-knock’ jokes

A – Knock knock
B – Who’s there?
A – Claire
B – Claire who?
A – Claire the way, I’m coming through.

Knock-knock jokes take place at a front door. It always begins ‘Knock knock’ with the reply ‘Who’s there?’ The next part uses a pun. A pun is a joke using a word that sounds like another word or it may be a word with different meanings.

‘Claire’ sounds like ‘clear’, so in the joke above it sounds like ‘clear the way, I’m coming through’.
Here is another example:

A – Knock knock
B – Who’s there?
A – Harry
B – Harry who?
A – Harry up, it’s cold out here. (Harry up sounds like ‘hurry up’)
Read more