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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
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.)
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. :)
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.
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.