Funnily Enough…

I guess whoever made the product in this photo imagined children having hours, or at least minutes, of fun cutting toy food. 

Then why am I, as a native English speaker, imagining children laughing while they cut toy food crookedly?  And isn’t that the same thing? Don’t we laugh when we’re having fun?

We can get the obvious out of the way first. I have never seen someone cut an ice cream cone or a box of french fries and I’ve only seen old folks cut hamburgers. I suspect some cultural misunderstanding behind this entire product, but that’s not our focus today.

This post has to do with the difficulty non-native English speakers have with the distinction between fun and funny. It’s actually simple. I’ll give you my quick tip to get them right and if you want to know more, read on after that.

Funny is what makes us laugh.

Fun is both enjoyment and how we describe enjoyable things.

Examples:

The comedy show was funny. I went to a funny comedy show.

The magic show was fun. I had fun at the magic show. 

Why does this trip people up? I suspect it has to do with how we build some describing words, or adjectives, in English. Check this out:

Sun is a thing (noun). Sunny is how we describe (adjective) how it is when there is sun.

Dirt is a thing (noun). Dirty is how we describe (adjective) how it is when there is dirt.

Fun is a thing (noun). Funny is how we describe (adjective), but not how it is when there is fun!

This is a classic example of an exception to a rule and these exceptions are one aspect that can make language learning so hard.

If that’s enough for you, take it and go communicate successfully in English! If you’d like a few more thoughts, read on.

Let’s look more closely at my examples.

The comedy show was funny. I went to a funny comedy show.

In both these sentences, “funny” is describing the comedy show. The show made me laugh. We have only moved where it stands in the sentence.

The magic show was fun. I had fun at the magic show. 

The magic show was enjoyable and I enjoyed it. In the first sentence, “fun” describes the magic show even though it does not end in “-y”, so it doesn’t follow the sun/dirt pattern of forming adjectives. It also means something different than “funny”. Notice we used the word “was” to link the magic show to fun.

In the second sentence, “fun” is a thing (noun). We used the word “have”. You can have things, like dirt, water or fun, but you cannot have funny.

Both a comedy show and a magic show can be fun or funny or even both, but it’s important to know which one you mean and use the right one. Not everyone will like being called funny, but most people like being called fun. And certain activities can be fun, but make no sense as funny. Like cutting toy food. Unless you’re cutting toy ice cream, which actually is funny. So maybe I’m wrong about this whole thing!

Lastly, fun is a really versatile word. It can be used as a noun, an adjective and a verb. There are other ways to use it that I’m not going to dive into here, but check out these blog entries here, here or here from other word nerds if you’re looking for that kind of depth.