I must admit, it was a brave effort, he almost did it. Unfortunately, there are two T letters in the Hebrew language and this guy chose the wrong one.
The word does have a meaning, just not the intended one. It can be read as "Shiteph" (shared) or "Shutaph" (partner). All the meanings derived from this word are sharing related, they have nothing to do with washing.
We've already seen the correct way to write the "Shataph" that means washed in Hebrew, just check out the wash-and-repeat guy, he got it right. It's written like this:
Still, I think today's victim is very lucky. His Hebrew tattoo actually has a meaning, a nice meaning too. What do they say? Sharing is caring...
You are correct: things could be lots worse for this 'victim'. I'll have one of my 'heverei' squeeze him a bit on the bad-tat, till he agrees to sing about, oh, who the Pope has in line next for saint-hood. A year of no problems and he gets a 'Mem' on the right plus a pair of yuds in the middle. Of course he'll need a new ID, but he may already be thinking about that.
ReplyDeleteI'd think that this kind of blunder would discourage people from getting any more tattoos in Hebrew, but you can never know...
ReplyDeleteYou're not a native Hebrew speaker, are you?
ReplyDeleteEvery Israeli will read שתף as SHATEF - meaning "share" in imperative.
Which is lovely nontheless. He orders people to share him around. We just need more girls with this tattoo.
Huh. You've got a point, I don't know why I saw Shiteph (shared) rather than Shateph (share!). The answer to that riddle is probably locked deep inside my psyche...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, about that girls remark, I have something coming up tomorrow that will be right up your alley. Do stick around!
The answer to the riddle is that there are (at least) as many interpretations as there are "native speakers" Absent any vowels or context, all I saw was a shoresh, a'luv ve' mis'khen. If the sucker meant a command, well, exclammation points are 50c a piece. And I'm still convinced this was shlab aleph of an eventual 'shatef peulah' (collaborator) tattoo. Plenty of space left on his/her back.
ReplyDeleteHaha, nobody else read this as the slightly-misspelled Yiddish word Shtup?!
ReplyDeleteFYI, Shtup is a crass word for marital-relations...
I personally like the שתף better than שטף. More meaningful in my opinion. Course I can't speak for the guy who got the tattoo.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that if people want a tattoo in another language, they don't CHECK IT OUT with someone who KNOWS THE LANGUAGE. It's almost hilarious how many people get screwed up Hebrew tattoos. I just love the fact that I know Hebrew so I can actually laugh at it. It's also helped me decide never to get a Japanese or Chinese tattoo, because I KNOW it'd be wrong. :/