It seems that there are words for all the important qualities of people, but… We all know that there are people who don’t understand humor. Often at all. They are called “people without a sense of humor”. And there are people who think they can joke, but actually can’t (objectively), yet they often try. They are kind of also “people without a sense of humor”, but there is a chasm between the first and the second group. Not understanding humor is not a problem. But a person who tries to joke unfunnily often (for me, for example), causes at least a feeling of awkwardness for that person, and at most, wariness, mistrust, and amplification of other negative qualities, if they are present in that person.
Of course, to understand irony and sarcasm, wordplay or ambiguity, one needs to have at least a common cultural layer. But six years in the USA showed that Americans are amused by exactly the same kind of humor as Russian speakers. In the sense that it’s crafted from the same mold. Clearly, quotes from Soviet cartoons won’t work at all. Nor could you explain to an American why intuition is the ability of the head to sniff with the behind. But constructing funny/witty parallels between what is happening and something else, naturally causes a smile or laughter in any culture. Also, you cannot build humor on something that might theoretically offend a person, especially humor not understood, or not realized to be humor.
Does it not provoke secondhand embarrassment for you when a person tries to joke but clearly can’t?
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 