Mark of a True Genius

There is stupid, and then there's this:


This genius of a girl wanted a "Child of God" tattoo in Hebrew. What did she do? Switched her keyboard to Hebrew mode and typed in the English letters of the phrase, then tattooed the result on her wrist. The result is sad, meaningless gibberish.

Hebrew being a right-to-left language, the writing ends up backwards when reversed back to English. Just read the caption right to left, only then you shall get the message.

This is how a Hebrew-English keyboard is mapped (pic lifted from Davka). If you have any doubts of the the message, you can trace it back yourself!



Right. For today's Hebrew lesson we will learn to write "Child of God" in Hebrew. Do pay attention, the word "Child" is gender specific: "Yeled" for a boy-child and "Yalda" for a girl-child:



14 comments:

  1. Ahahahahah! Oh I LOVE this one, they didn't even *try*!

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  2. A better translation would be:
    "ילדו של אלהים"

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    Replies
    1. thank you Solomon....my son wants this tattoo & i've been searching, so glad I found this site.

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  3. Nice one Solomon, I like it!

    See people, this is why you should ask for a second opinion, you just might get an upgrade :)

    (Solomon's translation is a male form of "Child of God")

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  4. I'd kind of prefer בת-אל for that particular one (daughter of god, basically) - since there are no gender neutral nouns you could use in that context.

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  5. Actually, in the Christian meaning, the most common form in Hebrew for 'Son of God' is 'בן האלוהים' (Ben HaElohim), so I think it would have been best to keep to this form for 'Child of God' as well (since this was what she meant, as evidenced by the Christian fish symbol). So:
    (m) בן האלוהים
    (f) בת האלוהים
    Or, if there's a specific reason to avoid 'son/daughter':
    (m) ילד האלוהים
    (f) ילדת האלוהים
    Although the last two sound weird in Hebrew, for some reason.

    Your Hebrew advice stands, of course, but the context is very important here as well.

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    Replies
    1. Is it more accurate to write it without the vowels?

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  6. I can't wait for this girl to walk into a synagogue. The entire congregation will be laughing their asses to the floor XD

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  7. Sounds like a biblical allusion so I'd skip "של" because it's mostly a Modern Hebrew thing.

    I'd go with the other commenter,
    (m) בן האלוהים
    (f) בת האלוהים

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  8. I would really like a tattoo of "my daughter" on one wrist, and "I'm beside you" but I don't want something stupid, or grammatically incorrect....I obviously want it in Hebrew, anyone want to help?

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  9. What about "Children of God"-- More in general

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  10. You all seem to really know your stuff, so I'd like to ask for help with Hebrew so that i don't make the same mistakes that the girl in the pic did. I want to have 'I have not yet loved enough' in Hebrew, which,using roman lettering should be 'od lo ahavti dai' (right?). I don't know what that'd look like properly in Hebrew though, and I'd really like to not mess this design up by getting it wrong.

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  11. Anonymous from Dec 19, 2009 or anyone else that could assist. I am looking to use the "Child of God" as well. According to the Christian context. Not being gender specific. What would that be in Hebrew? Thanks.

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