A friend got me thinking about bilingual puns recently, and I’ve come to recognize them as a good mnemonic device.
In Japanese, these jokes are called 親父ギャグ because they are supposed to be a genre limited to old men, but I find children enjoy puns just as much! Actually, I’d prefer to call them 言語熟考 (language ruminations) because they are the jokes of people who think about language not just as superficial expressions for putting thoughts into words, but as powerful expressions each with their own complicated characteristics and interesting histories.
So I came up with a “言語熟考” the other night, and I thought that it would really help a new learner of Japanese remember a couple of target terms.
スッパイだ！
[What does a spider (kumo) taste like? It's sour! (suppai da)]
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Good one!