Сергей Матвеев - Самые лучшие английские анекдоты

• Название: Самые лучшие английские анекдоты
• Автор: Сергей Матвеев
• Жанр: Анекдоты
• Год: 2015
• ISBN: 978-5-17-087613-6

Чтение шуток и занимательных историй – верный способ быстрого расширения словарного запаса и совершенствования знания английского языка.

В книжке собраны самые смешные анекдоты и шутливые рассказы, которые вызовут у вас желание побольше отводить времени изучению английского.

Тексты снабжены комментариями, в конце книги предлагаются упражнения и англо-русский словарик.

Издание рассчитано на всех, кто стремится читать на английском языке.

(CD прилагается только к печатному изданию.)

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The women wrote, “Woman! Without her, man is nothing.”

* * *

Charles shouted upstairs to his wife, “Hurry up or we’ll be late.”

“Oh, be quiet,” replied his wife. “Haven’t I been telling you for the last hour that I’ll be ready in a minute?”

* * *

First snake: I hope I’m not poisonous.

Second snake: Why?

First snake: Because I bit my lip!

* * *

A man asked for a meal in a restaurant. The waiter brought the food and put it on the table. After a moment, the man called the waiter and said, “Waiter! Waiter! There’s a fly in my soup!”

“Please don’t speak so loudly, sir,” said the waiter, “or everyone will want one.”

* * *

What’s the worst thing about washing your cat? Getting the fur off your tongue afterwards.

* * *

The woman came to the zoo with her little son. They came to the cage with a mystery big animal in it.

“Look, son, this is a whale,” said the woman.

“I am sorry, but this is a crocodile,” said the man.

“No, this is a whale,” the woman was very stubborn, as a donkey.

During this time the animal crawled on the land.

“As you see, this is a crocodile,” said the man, “the whales never crawl to the land!”

“Nonsense, you see with your own eyes, that sometimes they do it.”

* * *

The manager of a large city zoo was drafting a letter to order a pair of animals. He sat at his computer and typed the following sentence, “I would like to place an order for two mongooses,[65] to be delivered at your earliest convenience.”

He stared at the screen, focusing on that odd word mongooses. Then he deleted the word and added another, so that the sentence now read, “I would like to place an order for two mongeese, to be delivered at your earliest convenience.”

Again he stared at the screen, this time focusing on the new word, which seemed just as odd as the original one. Finally, he deleted the whole sentence and started all over. “Everyone knows no full-stocked zoo should be without a mongoose,” he typed. “Please send us two of them.”

* * *

A man runs into the vet’s office carrying his dog, screaming for help. The vet rushes him back to an examination room and has him put his dog down on the examination table. The vet examines the still, limp body and after a few moments tells the man that his dog is dead. The man, clearly agitated and not willing to accept this, demands a second opinion.

The vet goes into the back room and comes out with a cat and puts the cat down next to the dog’s body. The cat sniffs the body, walks from head to tail poking and studying the dog’s body and finally looks at the vet and meows. The vet looks at the man and says, “I’m sorry, but the cat thinks that your dog is dead too.”

The man does not want to accept that his dog is dead.

The vet brings in a black Labrador.[66] The lab sniffs the body, walks from head to tail, and finally looks at the vet and barks. The vet looks at the man and says, “I’m sorry, but the lab thinks your dog is dead too.”

The man, finally resigned to the diagnosis, thanks the vet and asks how much he owes. The vet answers, “£650.”

“£650 to tell me my dog is dead?” exclaimed the man….

“Well,” the vet replies, “I would only have charged you £50 for my initial diagnosis. The additional £600 was for the cat scan and lab[67] tests.”

* * *

What is the longest word in the English language? “Smiles”. Because there is a mile between its first and last letters!

* * *

There was once an aspiring veterinarian who put himself through veterinary school working nights as a taxidermist.

Upon graduation, he decided he could combine his two vocations to better serve the needs of his patients and their owners, while doubling his practice and, therefore, his income.

He opened his own offices with a sign on the door saying, “Dr. Jones, Veterinary Medicine and Taxidermy – Either way, you get your dog back!

* * *

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

– I’d have to say it was the rooster!

* * *

How do you catch a polar bear?

First, you cut a large, round hole in the ice. Next, you place enough peas around the hole to completely surround the hole. Then, when the polar bear comes to take a pea, you kick him in the icehole.

* * *

The boss called one of his employees into the office. “Rob,” he said, “you’ve been with the company for a year. You started off in the post room, one week later you were promoted to a sales position, and one month after that you were promoted to district manager of the sales department. Just four short months later, you were promoted to vice-chairman.[68] Now it’s time for me to retire, and I want you to take over the company. What do you say to that?”

“Thanks,” said the employee.

“Thanks?” the boss replied. “Is that all you can say?”

“I suppose not,” the employee said. “Thanks, Dad.”

* * *

The UN sponsored a competition on which nation can produce the best book on elephants.

The British submitted a dry historical account “The Elephant and the British Empire”.

The French submitted a text “The Sensuality of the Elephant – a Personal Account”.

The Germans submitted 47 Volumes entitled “An Elementary Introduction to the Foundation of the Science of the Elephant’s Ear”.

The Americans submitted an article from “Money” magazine: “Elephants – the Perfect Tax Shelter”.

Green-Peace submitted a counter-entry “Elephants – they’re better than People”.

But the Japanese won with their Promotional Flier “We have no Elephants but wouldn’t you want to buy a Honda instead”.

* * *

An unemployed man is desperate to support his family of a wife and three kids. He applies for a janitor’s job at a large firm and easily passes an aptitude test.

The human resources manager tells him, “You will be hired at minimum wage of £5.35 an hour. Let me have your e-mail address so that we can get you in the loop. Our system will automatically e-mail you all the forms and advise you when to start and where to report on your first day.”

Taken back, the man protests that he is poor and has neither a computer nor an e-mail address.

To this the manager replies, “You must understand that to a company like ours that means that you virtually do not exist. Without an e-mail address you can hardly expect to be employed by a high-tech firm. Good day.”

The man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having £10 in his wallet, he walks past a farmers’ market and sees a stand selling 25 lb. crates of beautiful red tomatoes. He buys a crate, carries it to a busy corner and displays the tomatoes. In less than two hours he sells all the tomatoes and makes 100 % profit. Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost £100 and arrives home that night with several bags of groceries for his family.

During the night he decides to repeat the tomato business the next day. By the end of the week he is getting up early every day and working into the night. He multiplies his profits quickly.

Early in the second week he acquires a cart to transport several boxes of tomatoes at a time, but before a month is up he sells the cart to buy a broken-down pickup truck.

At the end of a year he owns three old trucks. His two sons have left their neighborhood gangs to help him with the tomato business, his wife is buying the tomatoes, and his daughter is taking night courses at the community college so she can keep books for him.

By the end of the second year he has a dozen very nice used trucks and employs fifteen previously unemployed people, all selling tomatoes. He continues to work hard.

Time passes and at the end of the fifth year he owns a fleet of nice trucks and a warehouse that his wife supervises, plus two tomato farms that the boys manage. The tomato company has put hundreds of homeless and jobless people to work. His daughter reports that the business grossed over one million dollars.

Planning for the future, he decides to buy some life insurance. Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances. Then the adviser asks him for his e-mail address in order to send the final documents electronically.

When the man replies that he doesn’t have time to deal with a computer and has no e-mail address, the insurance man is surprised, “What, you don’t have e-mail? No computer? No Internet? Just think where you would be today if you’d had all of that five years ago!”

“Ha!” snorts the man. “If I’d had e-mail five years ago I would be sweeping floors at Microsoft and making £5.35 an hour.”

* * *

Young man Murphy applied for an engineering position at an Irish firm based in Dublin. An American applied for the same job and both applicants having the same qualifications were asked to take a test by the Department manager.

Upon completion of the test both men only missed one of the questions. The manager went to Murphy and said, “Thank you for your interest, but we’ve decided to give the American the job.”

Murphy: “And why would you be doing that? We both got 9 questions correct. This being Ireland and me being Irish I should get the job!”

Manager: “We have made our decision not on the correct answers, but on the question you missed.”

Murphy: “And just how would one incorrect answer be better than the other?”

Manager: “Simple. The American put down on question # 5, ‘I don’t know.’ You put down ‘Neither do I.’”

* * *

Fresh out of business school, the young man answered a want ad for an accountant. Now he was being interviewed by a very nervous man who ran a small business that he had started himself.

“I need someone with an accounting degree,” the man said. “But mainly, I’m looking for someone to do my worrying for me.”

“Excuse me?” the accountant said.

“I worry about a lot of things,” the man said. “But I don’t want to have to worry about money. Your job will be to take all the money worries off my back.”

“I see,” the accountant said. “And how much does the job pay?”

“I’ll start you at eighty thousand.”

“Eighty thousand dollars!” the accountant exclaimed. “How can such a small business afford a sum like that?”

“That,” the owner said, “is your first worry.”

* * *

A fellow had just been hired as the new CEO[69] of a large high tech corporation. The CEO who was stepping down met with him privately and presented him with three numbered envelopes. “Open these if you run up against a problem you don’t think you can solve,” he said.

Well, things went along pretty smoothly, but six months later, sales took a downturn[70] and he was really catching a lot of heat. About at his wits’s end,[71] he remembered the envelopes. He went to his drawer and took out the first envelope. The message read, “Blame your predecessor.[72]”

The new CEO called a press conference and tactfully laid the blame at the feet of the previous CEO. Satisfied with his comments, the press – and Wall Street – responded positively, sales began to pick up and the problem was soon behind him.

About a year later, the company was again experiencing a slight dip in sales, combined with serious product problems. Having learned from his previous experience, the CEO quickly opened the second envelope. The message read, “Reorganize.” This he did, and the company quickly rebounded.

After several consecutive profitable quarters, the company once again fell on difficult times. The CEO went to his office, closed the door and opened the third envelope.

The message said, “Prepare three envelopes.”

* * *

An accountant is having a hard time sleeping and goes to see his doctor.

“Doctor, I just can’t get to sleep at night.” “Have you tried counting sheep?”

“That’s the problem– I make a mistake and then spend three hours trying to find it.”

* * *

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

* * *

Returning from her vacation, the young secretary was telling anyone who would listen about what a fun time she had. She then asked for two weeks leave in which to get married.

“But you just had two weeks off,” said the boss. “Why didn’t you get married then?”

“What and ruin my vacation?” she whined.

* * *

A truck driver who had been delivering radioactive waste for the local reactor begins to feel sick after a few years on the job. He decided to seek compensation for his ailment. Upon his arrival at the workers’ compensation department, he is interviewed by an assessor.

Assessor: I see you work with radioactive materials and wish to claim compensation.

Trucker: Yeah, I feel really sick.

Assessor: Alright then, Does your employer take measures to protect you from radiation poisoning?

Trucker: Yeah, he gives me a lead suit to wear on the job.

Assessor: And what about the cabin in which you drive?

Trucker: Oh yeah. That’s lead lined, all lead lined.

Assessor: What about the waste itself? Where is that kept?

Trucker: Oh, the stuff is held in a lead container, all lead.

Assessor: Let me see if I get this straight. You wear a lead suit, sit in a lead-lined cabin and the radioactive waste is kept in a lead container.

Trucker: Yeah, that’s right. All lead.

Assessor: Then I can’t see how you could claim against him for radiation poisoning.

Trucker: I’m not. I am claiming for lead poisoning.

* * *

A boss had ten very lazy men working for him, so one day he decided to trick them into doing some work for a change.

“I’ve got a really easy job today for the laziest one among you,” he announced. “Will the laziest man please put his hand up.”

Nine hands went up.

“Why didn’t you put your hand up?” he asked the tenth man.

“Too much trouble,” came the reply.

* * *

Jones came into the office an hour late for the third time in one week and found the boss waiting for him. “What’s the story this time, Jones?” he asked. “Let’s hear a good excuse for a change.” Jones sighed, “Everything went wrong this morning, Boss. The wife decided to drive me to the station. She got ready in ten minutes, but then the drawbridge got stuck. Rather than let you down, I swam across the river (look, my suit’s still damp), ran out to the airport, got a ride on Mr. Thompson’s helicopter, landed on top of Radio City Music Hall, and was carried here piggyback[73] by one of the Rockettes.” “You’ll have to do better than that, Jones,” said the boss, obviously disappointed. “No woman can get ready in ten minutes.”