The TU and USTED Joke in Spanish
Un señor decide averiguar qué es lo que hace un empleado suyo que sale a la calle a las 11:00 a.m. y regresa a la 1 p.m. cada día. Contrata a un detective y a la semana éste le dice:
“Cada día a la misma hora coge su carro, va a su casa, hace el amor con su mujer, se fuma uno de sus puros y vuelve al trabajo.”
El señor le responde “Ah, menos mal, creía que podía estar haciendo algo malo en ese tiempo.”
El detective le aclara “Me parece que no me ha entendido asi que lo voy a tutear. Coge tu carro, va a tu casa…”
This joke highlights the ambiguity that may occur when using tu and usted. To explain it a bit better the word su may be used to mean you (formal) or his/hers. As it is written above there is no way to differentiate the two. So for a native Spanish speaker the automatic assumption is that the su refers to he, and not to the formal you.
For a bit more technical explanation, it is a play on words with the third person possessive pronoun su and the second person, formal possessive pronoun su. The clear meaning of the detective is only revealed when he switches to the second person, informal possessive pronoun tu.
As a quick footnote, translating this into English is not as simple as it first may appear. Any translation would then require an explanation of why it is funny, based on the confusion of tu and usted. As you can see above, my explanation is a bit convoluted for anyone that does not know the technical aspects of the language.
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Featured photo credit: detective by olarte.ollie via flickr