Pundamentalism

Tappy Huesday!

I had a lot of pun in reading about Puns today; Inspired by "And sometimes Y" on CBC RadioOne yesterday.
Puns are plays-on-words that could be used as rhetorical devices or just for fun. For example, the title of this post is "Pundamentalisms" which is a pun on fun.

There are different types of puns, but my favorite and simplest are Spoonerisms.
Its when you swap first syllable of two words in a sentence to get a different, often funny, new meaning. E.g. "Go shake a tower" instead of "go take a shower".

We have these puns, including Spoonerisms in Urdu too. I remembered that we used to say "charatha" for Chai + Paratha (tea+bread for breakfast), and "makhhar machhian" instead of "Machhar makhhian" (Mosquitos and Flies).
Another very popular Spooner is the famous quip:
Q: "Aapki buji mein kia ghara hay??" (ghari (clock)/baja (rings))
A: "Nonay pon!!" (ponay nau (8:45))

Even holy Bible and Quran have puns (not the funny ones, of course also known as Literary Puns as rhetorical devices):
* Matthew 16.18: "Thou art Peter" [Greek Πετρος, Petros], and upon this rock [ Greek πετρα, petra] I will build my church." (Pun on Peter & Petra (personal-name and stone)
* Quran, Surah Abasa: "wama yudreeka la'allahu yazzakka. Aou yadzzakkaru fa tanfa'ahuz dzikra" (pun on zakaa & dzikra (purify and remember/reminder) .
SubhanAllah, i just discocvered this in tonight's recitation... Quran is no doubt a linguistic miracle too!!

A very nice description of Puns on Wikipedia, alongwith different types:
http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Pun

Rappy Heeding~!! :-D