Quote Originally Posted by Throbert McGee View Post
Hmmm, in "standard" Russian, if I'm not mistaken, it would be more correct to say Штирлиц увидел как голубые ели if the meaning is "Shtirlitz saw the gays eating", right? So dropping the как makes the meaning ambiguous (and is an example of "grammatical ellipsis").

Anyway, the joke isn't directly translatable, but I thought of more or less analogous word-play in English:

James Bond once again noticed the woman with the arrogant gaze. "She's so beautiful -- it's too bad that her friends are snobbish homosexuals," he thought.
As far as I know, in "standard" Russian punctuation plays a more crucial role in affecting the meaning than it does in English, and that phrase could easily be turned into a grammatically flawless sentence by putting just one mark in there so it will be like, "Штирлиц шел по лесу и увидел: голубые ели... Подойдя поближе, он увидел что голубые не только ели, но и пили"