"living off the cruel joke"?

'The cruel joke I referred to as my savings' means that the money he has saved is so little that it is humorous to call it 'savings'.

I had no job and was paying my expenses with (= living off) my ridiculously small savings.

ohhh, I see, then I'll make sense.

Thank you,

m

Hi,

I am not sure what I'm expecting from you because you already answered to this question. But I can't help but wonder, it should be "I was living off my savings I referred to as the cruel joke." if I understood your explanation correctly.

For instance, this is from a English-English dictionary:

He always refers to the house as his refuge. And this is q

I was living off the cruel joke (that) I referred to as my savings.

The 'that' clause is restrictive, thus 'my savings' defines 'cruel joke'. It is a joke because he has almost no savings really. It is a joke to call it any sort of substantial savings. It is cruel because he has little savings, hence little to spend.

Oh, so he was literally, in a way, living off the cruel joke, not savings.

Thank you.

m

I don't think you've got it yet. He has very little money in his savings account. It is a joke to call it 'savings'.

I exactly do understand what you are explaining but to be honest as I try to translated the two sentences below I comes up with the same Japanese line, meaning there should be some confusion in my head.

I had no job at the time and was living off the cruel joke I referred to as my savings.

I had no job at the time and was living off my savings I referred to as

In English we can write it both ways and the reader still easily understands what is intended. However, only the first makes it a humorous line.

Jokes are sometimes hard for me to understand since they requires me to have something more than plain English and common sense.

Thank you for the reply anyway. I'll read it over and over again until I hear "click" in my head.

M

You can practice on [url=http://www.mistermicawbers.com/index.php?p=1_3_Jokes] MINE[/url]. They're relatively straightforward. There's a new one each week.