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Is this an old Irish joke? I thought I knew for a fact that it was French!

- "Pouvez-vous me dire comment aller à Paris"? - "Ben si j'étais vous je ne partirais pas d'ici!"

Very French in its non-helpful but matter-of-fact way... but maybe the Irish are the same!

Your French version feels authentic to me, but then so does the Irish one. I doubt one can say where jokes like these originate. All cultures and languages probably have versions of them.

The way I heard the joke in Vermont always involved a tourist asking an old farmer for directions and getting the answer "Well, you can't get there from here."

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