Nuni

I recently sighted some linguistically sophisticated humor on Saturday Night Live, of all places.  It occurred in a sketch about a vaguely European couple, both art dealers, who live in a 70s-futuristic apartment and have odd customs.  The overall joke is "Foreigners are weird"—surely one of the oldest sources of humor—but there's also a comment about foreign language phonology that I thought was pretty clever.

The actors in the sketch were: Topher Grace, playing Brian; Rachel Dratch, playing Pam; Fred Armisen, playing Nuni(M); and Maya Rudolph, playing Nuni(F).  I've attached the (M) and (F) tags to their names because...well, read on to find out why.  I've transcribed some of the words whose spelling I don't know in IPA, but the transcription isn't very close, so please forgive any odd usages.

At the beginning of the sketch, Brian and Pam enter the apartment of the European couple for whom Brian is doing some web design—they've been invited over socially:

Brian:  Thanks for having us over, Mr. [ʃoʊnɚ].
Nuni(M):  [laughs] It's Nuni.  OK, you must meet my new wife.  Darling, they're here!
Nuni(F):  [enters] Oh, welcome!  Ah, look at you both.
Pam:  Hello.
Nuni(M):  This is my wife, Nuni.
Brian:  Oh, that's funny, you guys–  you guys both have the same first name, Nuni.
Nuni(M):  No, no, no, no.  I am Nuni, she is Nuni.
Brian:  [looks confused] I see, Nuni and Nuni.
Nuni(F):  No, no, Nuni.  I am Nuni.
Brian:  Nuni.
Nuni(F):  No, no, Nuni.  You must use the back of your tongue.
[Both Nunis grab his face and squeeze his cheeks.  The three of them repeat "Nuni" several times.]
Nuni(F):  No, no, Nuni is masculine and Nuni is feminine.  Nuni.
Brian:  Nuni.
Nuni(F):  No, no.  Nuni.
Nuni(M):  Nuni.
Pam:  Honey, I think– I think she's Nuni and he's Nuni.
Nuni(F):  Yes, exactly!

The joke here is that there's some phonetic difference that Brian is unable to hear or produce (although Pam seems to be able to pull it off).  I especially like when they attempt, unsuccessfully, to explain the articulation he's doing wrong—"you must use the back of your tongue".

This sketch an entry in the rarefied category of phonology humor.  The actors do a good job with it, too.  Their various pronunciations of Nuni are all basically identical except for the first vowel.   Fred Armisen tends to say [u], although he sometimes also fronts it a bit, producing what sounds to me like [ʉ].  Maya Rudolph usually says [y], although she says [u] at least once, too.  Topher Grace consistently says [ʊ], while Rachel Dratch produces something that's either [y] or possibly [ju] with a short onglide.  So the foreign characters and Pam, who apparently can also make the contrast, tend to use phones that aren't found in English, while Brian uses a common English phone.  In spite of the minor variations, each actor's utterances are generally consistent among themselves, reinforcing the joke that Brian (and the English-speaking audience) are unable to detect some contrast.

There's more.  Later in the sketch, the joke is turned around, and we get to see what this sort of confusion looks like from the other side:

Nuni(F):  Brian, what is your woman's name?
Brian:  Oh, uh, God, I can't believe I did that.  I'm such an idiot, I'm sorry.  This is Pam.
Nuni(M):  [bæm].
Brian:  No, Pam.
Nuni(F):  [baɹ].
Pam:  It's, it's Pam.
Nuni(F):  [carefully] [boɹː].
Brian:  No, Paaam.
Nuni(M):  [puzzled] [bæːm], [bæm].  We're not saying this?
Pam:  No, you're saying [bæm], and it's Pam.  You know, short for Pamela?
Nuni(F):  [carefully] [baɹənɪn].
Brian:  Pamela.
Nuni(M):  [hjæpɚnau]. [pʰɚfnoʊ].
Brian and Pam:  Pamela.
Nuni:  (Various nonsense, including [haɹkəmaɹ], [boɹfɪs], and [boɹf])
Brian:  You know what, perfect!  You guys got it!  Perfect.

I love that they turned it around, as if to tell the audience, "This is how funny you sound when you're mispronouncing a foreign language."  It makes me cringe and want to apologize to my various conversation partners.

All in all, this sketch is pretty linguistically sophisticated humor.  I wonder if somebody at SNL has taken an introductory class at some point.

[Update:  Tweaked some of the transcriptions to be less embarrassingly wrong.]

Comments

[polyglot conspiracy]

Kind of reminds me of the Jimmy Smits-hosted SNL skit from several years ago, where all the white folks in the company boardroom hyper-Hispanicize the names of the Mexican lunch items they've just ordered - "tortilla," (torr-TEE-ya) "burrito," (boo-RREE-to) etc [excuse the poor approximations!]. Whereas Jimmy Smits pronounces them all understated and Anglicized, so as to say simply, "You guys are tools."

[The Wife]

GetUpGrrl calls those people "Secretly Spanish."

http://chezmiscarriage.blogs.com/chezmiscarriage/people_we_hate/index.html

thats the funniest sketch ever. thank you SO MUCH

[Krista]

Do you have the Nuni sketch taped... or even better... on your computer? Or even just the audio? If so, that'd be amazing b/c I think the Nuni sketch is like the funniest thing SNL has done in years. I was surprised to find so many haters when I searched the internet. Please email me if you have it! Thanks! :)

[ebp]

i have video of the newer sketch with will ferrell as the third "nuni" but not this one. can anyone help? :)

[Cara Owens]

My husband and I named the cat we adopted in August Nuni after this skit. My best friend who is Hungarian told us that Nuni is Hungarian for "pussy." Thought it was an appropriate name for a female cat!

i think that the girl is noony, and the boy is nuni

[Jack]

You guys are douche-bags.