A dirty grammar story

There is a simple dirty joke that work in Spanish but not in English based on differences in grammar.
The story goes like this: a female organist (you get the drift already) took gigs at churches. Sometimes her schedule didn’t allow her to play every service and someone else would take over. One day a male organist had been there before her and was assembling his gear ready to go as she was setting up her organ.
She asked him if he would plug in the cord to her organ as he was standing near it.
In English we would say, Can you plug the organ in/my organ in for me?
In Spanish, it is Me enchufas el organo?

The Spanish might be translated into English as something like Can you plug your organ into me?

So what’s going on here? 

The first thing to know is that polite requests in Spanish are phrased “you do x me?” English starts with “can you x me?” Enchufas means ‘you plug in’. 

The Spanish ‘me’ is ambiguous, it only means that ‘me’ is an involved entity (cf. Wm. Bull). So ‘me compras’ means ‘you buy for me’ and ‘me das’ means ‘you give to me’. The ‘me’ can mean ‘to me’, ‘in me’, ‘into me’ etc., I = me is just involved somehow in the activity. 

Another big difference between Spanish and English is the use of personal adjectives like ‘my’ and ‘your’. In Spanish the -s on the end of ‘enchufas’ says ‘you’ are doing it. The object of enchufas is ‘el organo’. But since it is ‘you’ doing it, we can assume it is ‘your’ organ or ‘the’ organ. So it is ambiguous. Ambiguity is what makes it interpretable as ‘the organ’ or ‘your organ’. English obviates that ambiguity by requiring the woman to say “your organ” vs “the organ” vs “my organ”, the last making it all clear, the first being an invitation. In fact, picturing the scene, “my organ” would be most likely to contrast it with the other, his, organ. 

The Spanish “you plug the organ in/for me” creates the hilarious faux pas….. or sly suggestion. 

Of course, all depends on overgeneralizing the meaning of ‘organ’, which works in both Spanish and English. 

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