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- "The ducks do not eat the pla…
"The ducks do not eat the plates."
Translation:Ankorna äter inte tallrikarna.
36 Comments
Someone should make a game where people try to think of a context for these duolingo sentences :D
There had been tension between the ducks and the plates for a while. The ducks had just been sitting on the lake, and as the humans came to give them bread, they bring out their own food... on plates. The ducks cannot help noticing that the plates did not move for a while. But suddenly, there is a gust of wind and before the humans can get up to notice, the plates are coming after them. They're tired of holding so much food and need some food for themselves. So they go for the ducks. The ducks could fight back, but they are on a diet, so the ducks do not eat the plates. Instead, the plates eat them. (They are in Soviet Russia.)
Ehm... what's the connection to soviet Russia? Russia is Russia, and soviet was another few countries plus Russia.
It's a joke format called the Russian reversal. You take a sentence, turn it around, and add "In Soviet Russia". For instance, since people rob banks, the joke is "In Soviet Russia, bank robs you!"
In this case, since Lydia's plates eat the ducks rather than the other way around, they are in Soviet Russia. :)
Mate, you have no idea about Russian language and Russian reversals. Your joke is silly and immature. Learn the language before posting some random stuff :)
What are you talking about? It's a really old kind of joke, attested from the 1930s according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reversal
Bruh. It's not about the Russian language, it's about Russian culture. It's a cold war era joke about how Soviet culture was the "opposite" of American culture - because America and Russia were the main opposing forces in the cold war era world. Seeing as the Soviet Union doesn't even exist anymore, I don't see why you should get offended over it.
I missed off the "inte" but the corrected version introduced a word I haven't seen before:
" You used the wrong word. Ankorna äter ej tallrikarna."
What is "ej" ?
It's an old way to say "inte", not much used nowadays, as far as I know. I have no idea why Duo suggested it in the corrected version though, I can just figure out that it thought it was similar to one you used but was not correct. What was your original answer?
Thank you - I wrote "ankorna äter tallrikarna" and missed off the inte for some reason. However, perhaps I'd also made a typo which threw Duo a bit.
Thanks for the explanation!
ej is still used but it's considered formal. It's also good for situations where brevity is important, so you'll see it on e.g. street signs and similar.
It's a very common word so it's important to accept it, but unfortunately Duolingo doesn't have an option to "accept this, but don't show it to learners unless they actually enter it". So the system displays it to users now and then when they get something wrong, even though it's never the default.
Lingot for the explanation as to how Duo works - helps me get less frustrated with it!!
I'm learning more in the comments about English than Swedish in duolingo. Thanks
This is nothing big, but when I hovered over the word "The" (at the front of the sentence), it translated it as "tallrickarna." Just wanted to let the devs know. PS - Tallrickarna = the plates.
Thanks for the report. :) Yeah, it's because "the" occurs twice, and Duolingo apparently isn't smart enough to figure out where it should connect. If you hover over "plates", it shows correctly, for instance. I don't think we can affect this. :/
änder are wild ducks and ankor are domesticated ones, specifically mallards.
Because "anka" belongs to the first declension and "tallrik" to the second. Or, equivalently, because "anka" ends with "a" and "tallrik" doesn't, and they are both common gender substantives, that is, -en nouns.
