Harvest my connective tissues so that the Motherland may restock her glue reserves…
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Great site but needs to have accurate translations done. Might be a valuable resource for learning some Russian. The photo captions are probably pretty funny in their own right. It doesn’t take much to amuse Am3rikans.
Gordski’s comment sums up why this site is funny. I live with a Russian girl and she has no sense of humour whatsoever. Anybody with a genetic ability to see irony ended up in the Gulag and so the trait died out.
“Wow Joanne, it is [a] privelege to watch your mind work! Tell me, do you think the same is true for the Jews who did not end up in Nazi concentration camps, or do you still admit to [a] sense of humor in that nation[notion?] even if it won’t let you make fun of their history?”
Translation of Fluents’ comment.
Which I don’t understand
Okay, I understand Fluent now. I don’t _think_ he’s antisemitic. Joanne said “Anybody with a genetic ability to see irony ended up in the Gulag and so the trait died out.”
Fluent took this seriously, and replied as translated above. I believe he meant:
“Do you think all Jews with a sense of humor were killed in concentration camps [because they don’t like jokes about the holocaust]? Countries can still have a sense of humor even if they’re sensitive about their history.”
Of course, the fact I understand that means that I apparently speak Comment fluently- a dubious accomplishment.
It certainly is funny! Come on, I don’t want to make a horse into glue any more than the next guy, but a lot of comedic value comes from stereotypes. Lighten up. As for literal translations, sure, they’d be nice, but it’d be a totally different kind of funny, I’m sure. Just like other countries make fun of Americans for our idiosyncracies, we do the same of them. It’s not because we want them to feel bad, it’s just (oh my God, dare I say it??) fun.
Not to be the obnoxious person who’s in a russian class (because while I am, it’s only first-year so I don’t really know anything), but one random cultural thing my professor mentioned is the MASSIVE difference between russian and american humor. I mean, all cultures have variations but there’s a very large one with the russians and us, so no wonder everyone’s so confused here as to whether these translations/originals are actually funny…
Christina, I’m guessing that you’re a beginning student of Russian. Why don’t you try typing the phrase “ключ на 32” into Google Image search and seeing what kind of pictures it returns? To spare you the suspense: You’ll get pictures of wrenches/spanners. And how does one specify wrench sizes in Russian? With the preposition “на” followed by the appropriate number of millimeters.