The human need for laughter is very great. Laughter promotes good mood, friendship, relieves stress, and even heals. This is probably why witty pranksters, around whom there is always fun and smiles, are everyone's favorites. One of the main "tools" of such humorists is an anecdote.
An anecdote is a short story with an unexpected and witty ending. The word "anecdote" comes from the French noun "anecdote", meaning a funny story, a curious incident, a detail. It appeared in Russia in the second half of the 18th century, and up to the middle of the 19th century, it was understood as a really funny incident from the life of a famous character. Often such anecdotes-tales were told to the Russian nobility just in the then extremely widespread French language. However, both the Russian “anecdote” and the French “anecdote” are only modern descendants of the Greek word “anékdotos”, which translates as “unpublished”. Indeed, the anecdote is intended to be oral and "rootless": it refers to folklore, and, like folk tales and songs, it has no author. Nevertheless, it is still possible to determine the nationality of the anecdote both by its characteristic characters and by its specific humor. For example, everyone knows that English humor is exclusively the lot of the British, which remains beyond the understanding of representatives of other peoples; and foreigners often find American jokes flat and obscene. An important feature of the anecdote follows from this: it is understood and accepted by the listener only if it coincides with his mentality. Often, jokes are sharp and topical, with the help of them people express their dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in politics and economics. They say about such anecdotes that they "laugh at them so as not to cry." Some anecdotes make up whole "serials", united by one or more main characters. In Russia, the favorite characters of anecdotes are, for example, Stirlitz, Lieutenant Rzhevsky, Vovochka, Chapaev, Petka and Anka the machine gunner, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Many anecdotes are dedicated to the "new Russians", renamed over time into oligarchs, as well as the love triangle: a husband who went on a business trip, an unfaithful wife and lover. As for representatives of various professions, the largest number of witticisms are invented about doctors. If you want to become a good storyteller of jokes, take note of some rules: - tell only the joke that you remember well from beginning to end; - take a break between jokes, do not tell them one by one; - before telling the anecdote, think about whether it will be perceived by someone from those present at your own expense, whether it will offend the listeners; - learn not to laugh until you tell the whole anecdote.