But don't worry, it gets worse...
This lovely Hebrew tattoo, which was sent to us by Michelle, encountered several transcribing misfortunes. Eventually it mutated into a slightly misspelled "Squeezed from the eye - Squeezed from Helen". One of the funniest misspellings seen so far!
How could it happen? Well, the Hebrew equivalent of the proverb "Out of Sight, Out of Mind", literally means "far from the eye, far from the heart" and is correctly written like this:
You'd say that it looks just the same? It is not. Hebrew is all about the subtleties.
In Hebrew, the word for "far" is "Rachok", it is written with a Resh. Exchange the Resh for a Dalet and you get "Dachuk" which means squeezed or pushed away.
Now, "from the heart" in Hebrew is "mehalev". Switch the Bet (here pronounced as V) for a Nun, and you get "mehelen" - from Helen. It's a misspelled Helen, since Nun should be used in its final form when it closes a word, not the regular form we have here.
Luckily for our victim, the tattoo is quite fixable, just add a bit of ink here and there...
I prefer 'Ah, Helen: I wuz the apple of her eye; now I just have to be...be-cider. *sobs*
ReplyDeleteTypo, you are correct: this one is fixable, and not as bad as some previous victims who, 'out of their minds', should have chosen a location 'out of sight' for their scribblings.
I think it gets even better since by looking carefully you'll see the nun at the end is actually a gimmel :]
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, the final letter appears to be a gimel, not a non-sofit nun. Well, perhaps that's worse.
ReplyDeleteIt's actually a Gimel, not a Nun - which makes it funnier in Hebrew/English because the last part reads: "Far from the LEG"
ReplyDeletelol non-sofit sounds like nun-sofit.
ReplyDeleteLOL I just got a "syngue" captcha, similar to synagogue
ReplyDeleteCan also be translated:
ReplyDeleteSqueezed from the eye - Squeezed from the sleeper (ha'lan) :)
It can be also - squeezed from the LAN
ReplyDelete