420 is definitely not a funny number in the Netherlands. Except maybe with the permanently online or stoner crowd. I’ve never heard or seen a joke with 420 in the Netherlands. Most people wouldn’t even get what it means and more people would recognize 69 as a funny number than 420.
An explanation for the French one:
It’s the id of a law that allow the president to bypass one of the chamber. This is of course one of those “it’s just in case of emergency, bro. I swear we will not use it to force the passage of unpopular laws, bro…”
It has been used 420 times by the current government.
Ah good ol’ Germany 1930s style
420!
Same with Italian. 104 is the number of the law for handicapped people
AAA POST IT ON LEMMY NOT AS LINK
What do you mean? When you post a picture on the web-ui, a pctrs link is generated automatically: https://discuss.online/pictrs/image/d2c2e190-2395-4be3-9b15-2fd9bc157fa3.png?format=webp
Which client are you using?
i usually use voyager for lemmy, and it cuts it off
Sad to hear. Probably an improvement to suggest to the Voyager devs
I’ll fix it next release
Can someone from Poland explain?
The number refers to the reported time of death of pope John Paul II, 9:37 PM or 21:37, as Poland uses a 24 hour system. The use of the number is connected with memes about the late pope, as there was almost a cult folllowing for JP2, noone was allowed to even criticize him, after his death, with time popped out evidence of the pope not being such a great person, so people started meme’ing on him.
And France? And Spain?
For France, 49.3 is an article of the Constitution used by the government to bypass the Parliament approval: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/world/europe/france-constitution-article-49-3.html
Ah ok, makes sense.
So that’s basically the presidential french version of Ron Swanson’s permit.
The Spanish thing with 5 is a lewd rhyme as well. A pretty tortured one, too. It refers to anal sex, but the word they’re rhyming isn’t butt. Or sex. It’s just a less common word for sticking a thing into a thing.
I don’t know what the 33 thing is about, though.
I looked it up, apparently there’s a saying where people say “my balls 33” to mean that something is false or not gonna happen? Even people who know the expression seem confused about where it came from. I don’t know, your guess is as good as mine here.
Cinco cinco … por el culo te la hinco
31 in Turkey is another name for male masturbation
On a separate topic, I am thinking about creating a more laid-back, relaxed community for Europeans, without news (as they seem to be the central focus of this community). I’m still investigating which server would be the best to host it, lemm.ee seems to be a good candidate.
I really liked YUROP on the spezSite, they had good silly memes about Europe and were eager to post pro-Europe stuff.
I joined a similarly named community when I switched to Lemmy, but it died off pretty quickly [email protected]
Maybe we could revive it, speak with their mod, or create a new one that’s active?
Interesting, thanks for the pointer! http://lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz/ seems down indeed, so I guess this one is lost.
I’ll probably post a dedicated post today or tomorrow about this, I can ping you if you want
Me too please
And my axe
No 80085?
Wondering why Poland and Turkey aren’t in the “Other” category when as far as I can see they’re the only ones with that number
Pretty sure 420 is American thing…
As long as it’s not a German thing
What about 1312, 1337, 161 or 42?
The biggest jokes in Germany are related to 18 and 88.
It’s missing 8008135.
I feel dump, I think I only get the 420 here. Does 300 refer to sparta?
Might be Cargo 300, Soviet category for wounded personnel.
No, it doesn’t refer to Spartans. It is a rhyme that doesn’t translate well into English and is on the same level as ligma or joe mama jokes.
Whenever someone ends their sentence with 300 a quick-witted individual may reply with “suck a tractor drivers cock!”. 300 and “tractor driver” rhyme in this case in Russian, bringing the desired comedic effect. As you can imagine teenagers love it and even try baiting their friends into saying 300.
You can find many words that rhyme with any word for a dick in English and make this joke free of charge. I will start:
— “Have you seen my sock?”
But триста and тракторист don’t really rhyme. They sound a bit similiar at best. Could you explain?
Sure. There’s a thing in a lot of languages called grammatical cases. In basic terms cases make a word “adhere” to the rest of the sentence. Different languages have different amounts of cases. For example, German has four, Ukrainian – seven and Russian – six cases for nouns.
In this case the word тракторист would change to тракториста and it rhymes with триста.
The whole joke looks like this:
— Триста.
— Отсоси у тракториста!
Понятня, спасибо. Я знаю о падежах, мой родной язык - немецкий, и я немного знаю русский.
And just to make sure no one reading this thinks speaking a little Russian means supporting Russias dictatorship:
Слава Украини!
Россия будет свободна!
Героям Слава!
Suck a tractor drivers dick!
(am I doing this right?)
Haha, you got me.
Though I think cock would rhyme better with sock, but you’ve got the gist of it. Keep it up!
On a side note, “jokes for 300” is a template response for joke, referencing to a lockal jeopardy! show equivalent. This response means that joke was mediocre at best.
I’ve no idea why Croatia and Bosnia have 69 while Serbia and Montenegro have 8, when surely both “funny numbers” are well-known in the area equally. 420 is also known just about everywhere, not just Netherlands.
What’s funny about 8?
When someone says “osam” (eight), you reply with one of the rhyming insults
“Nos ti posran” = Your nose is covered in shit
or
“Na kurcu te nosam” = I carry you on my cock
They’re rather silly insults, I think nobody actually uses them beyond the age of 12, but everyone knows them.
![[Lighthearted content] Numbers often used to make silly jokes around Europe](https://preview.redd.it/9c1usw6p86ec1.png?width=768&auto=webp&s=a64c4d3acb840dc9aaa43470683ba579931e11ab){kind=link}
