I have done many German tongue-twisters and riddles with J, but not jokes, until the audiobook today. He greatly enjoyed them, and it seems to me he "got" about one third or so of them. I think I'm going to start doing jokes with him on a regular basis.
This audiobook purports to be a "live" recording of schoolyard joke-telling among a group of kids. Linguistically it does make a very authentic impression, with lots of pauses and hesitations, stops and startovers, etc. The children are also sometimes quite difficult to understand (despite the excellent recording quality) because they mumble and slur. But that's how kids talk of course and it's good practice to listen to. J seemed to have few difficulties in this regard, since he already has lots of experience with normal youth speech patterns through his video-game videos and shows like Hello Benjamin!
I myself, having begin German at age 21, never really experienced German jokes in their natural habitat. I was interested to learn that, like "knock knock" jokes in English, there are distinct genres of jokes in German. Two of them featured here are Häschenwitze ("bunny jokes") and Fritzchenwitze ("Fritzie jokes") here et al.). The former feature a juvenile bunny who repeatedly asks for carrots ("Haddu Möhren?), prompting humorous reactions and responses; and the latter center around a quick-witted and rascally little boy—Fritzchen—in interactions with authority figures, usually teachers.
I was also very interested to learn (see link above) that the Häschenwitze first arose in East Germany as political jokes.
Total audio 2015: 52.01 hours
Total video 2015: 74.15 hours
Age 5.9.15
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