The New Parrot
Ret's ESL Jokes
A man buys a parrot and brings him home. But the parrot starts insulting him and getting nasty, so the man picks up the parrot and throws it into the freezer to teach him a lesson.
He hears the bird screeching for a few minutes, then total silence.
He opens the freezer door and the parrot walks out, looks up at him and says, “I’m sorry if I offended you, I humbly ask for your forgiveness”
The man says, “Well, that’s okay. I forgive you.”
The parrot then says, “If you don’t mind my asking, what did the chicken do?”
📘 Key Vocabulary+
parrot: PERROQUET
nasty: MÉCHANT
freezer: CONGÉLATEUR
screeching: POUSSANT DES CRIS STRIDENTS
forgiveness: LE PARDON
if you don’t mind my asking: SI VOUS ME PERMETTEZ DE VOUS POSER LA QUESTION
📖 Grammar Points+
1. Past simple for completed narrative actions
The joke uses past simple throughout to tell the sequence of events: buys, brings, starts, picks up, throws, hears, opens, walks out, looks up, says, says. This tense moves the story forward clearly and chronologically. Learners can see how English speakers use past simple to list what happened one after another — from buying the parrot to the final question. The present tense in the dialogue (“I’m sorry”, “what did the chicken do?”) is direct speech, which naturally uses the speaker’s original tense.
2. Present simple for dialogue and quoted speech
The joke uses present simple for the parrot’s direct speech: “I’m sorry if I offended you”, “I humbly ask”, “I forgive you”, “what did the chicken do?” (past simple in the question). This is a key feature of English: the tense inside quotation marks reflects the speaker’s original tense, not the narrator’s tense. For French speakers, this is an important distinction — the past simple narrative frame contrasts with the present tense of the spoken words.
🔁 Synonyms & Alternatives+
nasty · mean / unpleasant / vicious: MÉCHANT → also “désagréable”
screeching · shrieking / squawking: POUSSANT DES CRIS → also “hurlant”
💬 Mini Dialogue+
Context: Two friends, Thabo and Lerato, are talking about how Thabo taught his dog a lesson after it chewed up his shoes.
Thabo: “My dog was getting nasty, so I put him in the garden and locked the door.”
Lerato: “What happened?”
Thabo: “He was screeching for a while, then silence. When I opened the door, he looked at me with big eyes, asking for forgiveness
Lerato: “So he learned his lesson?”
Thabo: “Yes! But then he looked at me and said, ‘If you don’t mind my asking, what did the cat do to get locked in the kitchen?’”
Uses past simple for narrative actions (“was getting”, “put”, “locked”, “opened”, “looked”), present simple for direct speech, and vocabulary items integrated naturally.
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