🤖 Literally, in English
“Eggs do not teach the hen.”
Яйця курку не вчать. Yaytsia kurku ne vchat
🤨 What does it ACTUALLY mean? →
🇬🇧 What you'd actually say
“Don't tell someone with far more experience how to do their job.”
also: “Who are you to lecture me?” · “I was doing this before you were born.”
- 📖 Meaning
- A younger or less experienced person should not instruct someone who has done it for years.
- 💡 Why it's funny
- English has an idiom for exactly this and it also involves eggs — but in the English version the grandmother is being taught to eat them, and in the Ukrainian one the eggs have opinions.
- 🧭 Closest English idiom
- “Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs.”
- 📝 Explanation
- Sharp, sometimes said with a laugh and sometimes as a genuine rebuke. Very widely used at work and in families.
🧠 Learn
- lecture (verb) — to tell someone what to do in a superior way — повчати “Don't lecture me about safety.”
- know better (phrase) — to have more experience or judgement than someone — краще знати “She's been here twenty years — she knows better.”
🗣 In context
Він мені пояснює, як варити борщ. Яйця курку не вчать.
He's explaining to me how to make borshch. Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs.
🎧 Hear the contrast
dontpushthehorses.xyz
