From the Wikibooks Jokebook

[pne]

Q: What do you call a middle eastern man in the cockpit of a plane?

A: A pilot.

Comments

[marikochan.livejournal.com]

What does "Neger" mean? I got as far as "What's it called when a __ falls in the snow?" but I'm not even sure that's correct. =P

[pne.livejournal.com]

I got as far as "What's it called when a __ falls in the snow?" but I'm not even sure that's correct. =P

It is. (And the punchline is "Winter", as is probably obvious.)

"Neger" means "negro", i.e. person of dark skin colour. Not the most PC term, but I'd say not actually offensive. (I'm not sure of the status of "negro" in the US; it's likely that the German word is more acceptable, though.)

The joke being that the "expected" punchline is, presumably, something based on black and white being mixed, e.g. an Oreo or whatever.

Hm, on reviewing the joke, it should be "Wie heißt es, wenn..." rather than "Was heißt es, wenn...". "What's it called" is "Wie heißt es" (literally, "How's it called"), while I'd interpret "Was heißt es" as "What does it mean/what is the significance of".

[marikochan.livejournal.com]

Aha! That was actually my first guess, but I was thinking of "fall" in the wrong way -- as in, falling among the snow, rather than tripping and falling.

Re: Negro, I'm not sure I'd call it exactly offensive (not as much so as other possibilities, anyway), but it sounds old-fashioned and somewhat backwards.

Genitiv ins Wasser, denn es ist Dativ!

[pne.livejournal.com]

That was actually my first guess, but I was thinking of "fall" in the wrong way -- as in, falling among the snow, rather than tripping and falling.

Oh! Right.

The German uses the accusative here ("...in den Schnee..."), which indicates motion, so a better translation would perhaps be "falls into the snow".

The "falling among" interpretation of "in the snow" would use the dative ("...im Schnee..." < "...in dem Schnee").

It's correct

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

LEO (http://dict.leo.org/) is your friend!