Welcome back to Mother Tongue, Borrowed Words. I am Lerato Dlamini, and this week we are talking about jokes. My guest Omar is a stand-up comedian from Cairo who performs in Arabic at home and in English in London, and he told me something that stopped me: he is funnier in English and sadder in Arabic, and he does not fully know why. So we sat down after a show and went through the same five jokes in both languages to find the exact place where the personality changes. We talk about the longer run-up an Arabic joke needs, the topics that are safe in one room and radioactive in the other, and what his mother said when she finally watched the English set. If you have ever felt like a slightly different person in your second language, this one is for you. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.