Voice of British Muslim Women

Iffat Mirza Rashid, Alton

I once had a friend whose research looked at the different personalities we embody in different languages. At the time, being monolingual herself (we were both learning Spanish together), she was curious about what it was like for me growing up speaking Urdu and English, and it was the first time I really considered how my personality may shift or change between the languages.

The one thing I remember telling her was that I felt a lot more comfortable making jokes, understanding them and responding to humour in English as this was easier for me. I didn’t know it at the time but this conversation would follow me for a long time, as I would go on to ponder what it means to be funny in languages beyond your mother tongue.

To make someone laugh isn’t just about relying on slapstick comedy but to make a really good joke one must understand one’s audience, the cultural context, social references, time, and place. All in all, I truly think that to be a funny person you have to be very sensitive to other ways of seeing and to be able to do this in your first language is difficult enough, let alone in a foreign language.

So today, as we mark World Laughter Day, it’s important to think about how laughter can force us to self-reflect on our own culture and our interactions with other cultures. It requires us to see the world beyond ourselves.

Of course, there are many health benefits to laughing, studies show those who laugh more often have better heart health, mental health, and generally have a prolonged life expectancy. But the social benefits are vast too, particularly when we think of laughter as a way to bridge cultures and differences, and understanding the different layers of our own being. Reflecting on my own experiences, I’ve come to realise that my hesitation with humour in Urdu was not about a lack of fluency, but about a lack of confidence in navigating its social nuances, and over the last few years, as I’ve made more of a conscious effort to interact with Urdu, that confidence has grown. It’s by no means the same as my English, but it’s not non-existent either.

I find myself wondering, then, whether becoming fluent in another language also means learning how to be funny in it, not just grammatically correct, but socially attuned. It requires a kind of attentiveness that goes beyond vocabulary lists or verb conjugations. It asks us to listen for what is unsaid, to understand references we may not immediately recognise, and to accept that sometimes, we will get it wrong. Sometimes, even if we understand all the words we may not understand the meaning.

And I think that’s reflective of our interactions as humans not just with other cultures, but anyone external to our own being: our family, our friends, our colleagues. We’ll always be learning about each other more deeply, and shared laughter is certainly one of the quickest ways to do so.

This is also what sustains friendships, the ones where, with just a flick of the eyes a joke can be understood even if not said, the ones where it’s clear that you’re both thinking the same thing and can both understand what is funny and why, without a word being uttered. It becomes a secret language that is so specific to the friendship, one that relies on the ‘culture’ your friendship has created, the ones with its own reference points, shared experiences, historical jokes etc. What I mean to say, is that through humour and laughter we build our own personal cultures also, and so culture exists at the micro level as well as the macro.

Indeed, Chapter 49 Verse 14 of the Holy Qur’an tells us ‘…and We have made you into clans and tribes that you may recognise one another…’ Mutual recognition is necessary, especially in the ever-globalised world that we live in today. I cannot think of any better way than through the mutual language of laughter and cheer.