for David - a lesson in joke telling

"why not reverse the Martians never their coffee ?"

This is a prime example of Google mistranslating. I guess in French (gulp! I hope) it is said something like "pourquoi ne pas inverser les Martiens ne leur café?" There seems to be a mistranslation of the verb inverser into English which could mean either reverse or invert. In this sentence it means invert which is another way of saying spill.

To make the joke work in English we need to ask

"why do martians never spill their coffee?" (I have never heard any one say I inverted my coffee but it means much the same)

Also in English 2 negatives make a positive so by using not and never in the same sentence makes it a positive. The first sentence can be misunderstood as being "why do martians always spill their coffee", which means exactly opposite to what you wanted to say, so as a general rule only use one negative or one positive in a sentence.

The answer: they have saucers

This is correct, but an English joke teller would deliver the punchline ( a name for the answer to a joke) as "because they have saucers"

I hope this helps!!

Funny joke BTW

hi Mez
yes it helps ,

thank you very much

David

you are welcome

But Pat,

The surface tension alone may make the coffee creep out of the cup slowly.

Roy