Baseball Funnies

Baseball Cartoon by Andertoons

Some times knowing the language is not enough. You understand all of the words but it's still doesn't make sense.  You need to understand the culture too.   Things like this cartoon involve cultural references. 

"We want a pitcher, not a belly itcher!" 

This is a silly thing we yell at the pitcher at a baseball game when we are kids.   It's a funny way to tell the pitcher to do a better job.   So, now that you know this piece of American culture does the cartoon make more sense?

Something to smile about!

Education Cartoon by Andertoons

See even native English speakers don't know what these things are!  ;)

American Cartoons - Andertoons

Food Cartoon by Andertoons

Listen to me read this post


Mark Anderson is one of my favorite cartoonists.  He has a very funny website and blog at www.andertoons.com.  I added his daily cartoon widget to the sidebar so you can get a daily laugh.

Like graphic novels and comic books, cartoons use pictures and humor to tell a brief story.   But humor can be hard to understand for non native speakers because they refer to things related to culture. 

For example, do you understand the cartoon above?  There is a very famous children's book in the United States called The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  As you can guess by the title it's about a caterpillar who eats and eats.  It was written by Eric Carle.  In the cartoon the the caterpillar from the book is visiting a psychiatrist to talk about his problems.  It's only funny if you know the book which most people do in the US because they've read the book as a child or read it to their own children. 

I hope this explaination helps you enjoy this cartoon a little more. 

Thanks for listening.  This has been Cassie Brenn for fastfoodenglish.blogspot.com.