I know a grand total of two phrases of Chinese: how to say “hello” (thanks, Jackie Chan) and how to say something which is unusable in polite company (thanks, World or Warcraft). And given my poor pronunciation skills, I bet I mispronounce the former badly enough to make it unusable in polite company as well.

I jest, but that’s part of the point. If you really want to understand a culture, the best way I’ve found is through its humor.

Ever read a Shakespeare comedy? Half the jokes only make sense after reading the footnotes, and the other half don’t make sense even with the footnotes.

A lot of humor derives from a reversed expectation. We expect one thing to happen, but something else does; it surprises us and makes us laugh. When we reach across cultures (or far enough back in our own culture) we don’t have the same set of expectations, and so the jokes don’t work for us. Learning why something is funny to someone else, even if we don’t find the learning process itself very funny, tells us a ton about what another culture expects of the world.

Learn the language and you pick up culture along the way.

And understanding culture is valuable — whether it’s for practical reasons, or my own, geekier ones.

For practical reasons: I work with lots of Chinese students and colleagues, as well as Korean, Thai, Romanian, Ukranian, German, and so on (and yet my minor in Japanese continues to collect dust in my closet). Having all my interactions with them be on American terms in the American language with American social mores feels stilted and awkward. At times, I am sorry to say, I’d rather not interact with people than slam my head against a major cultural and linguistic divide.

And the geeky reason is that I like learning the mechanics of language as much as I like learning the viewpoints of different cultures. This is not exclusive to foreign cultures either. Coming from Oregon to the middle of the Midwest plains brings its own set of unique linguistic/cultural questions, like “What exactly is a cheese curd?” or “How in the nine circles of Hell and the city of Dis do you people stand all this cold?”

So if you want to get to know a new culture — and I heartily encourage you to do so — don’t start by picking up a newspaper, start with the funny pages. If you want an opportunity get to know a visiting student, invite them to a game night with your friends (I suggest avoiding Scrabble). If you want to brush up on your language skills, why not find a comedy movie done in that language? Better yet, find someone from that culture, and ask them what they watch.

This doesn’t mean that at each moment you’ll need to stop and have every joke explained in a droll, boring “this is why this is funny” way. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of humor is how easily certain jokes cross over. Silly cat videos on YouTube don’t need words to make us laugh.

On my most recent trip overseas, I was just sitting down to lunch in a restaurant in Tokyo when the music on the in-house speakers switched from low-key ambient music to a gaudy big-band tune, complete with blaring trumpets, swing rhythm and crooning singer. I looked up and saw a middle-aged Japanese woman across from me having as much trouble repressing her laughter as I was.

We didn’t need to speak to know exactly what the other was thinking: Bad music is bad music no matter where you go.

Joseph is a graduate student.