Technorati Tags: Weird Sign Wednesday, Humor, Spell Check
2 years ago
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Weird Sign Wednesday XIV
Technorati Tags: Weird Sign Wednesday, Humor, Spell Check
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Technorati Tags: Weird Sign Wednesday, Humor, Spell Check
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- Mottel
- Rabbi by education, Journalist by profession, Blogger by choice. Torah, Chassidus & the Social Web. Appreciator of: craft beer, fresh coffee, Scotch or Bourbon, brewed tea, photography, art and travel. Note: Views and opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employers
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5 comments:
That's what happens when people trust spellcheck too much.
In all the mail that Chicago Mesivta sent the parents, they wrote "Gomorrah" instead of "Gemara."
Once I saw a sign for a mesivta about a new moshiach shiur. at the bottom it said: Give the Rebbe nachos.
they meant nachas, of course, not the chips
These are funny comments!
I also didn't get the capital Vov.
It's not really an error.
The word "capital" comes from the Latin "caput", "head". In old manuscripts the first letter (and to a lesser extent the rest of the first word) of a new chapter was usually large and ornately illustrated. This was the original "capital" and it is why we refer to a "kapitel" of Tehillim: we mean that we will begin at the start of a chapter, its "head".
When European writing began to distinguish between upper- and lower-case letters they used the larger upper-case ones for titles and the beginning of sentences. They called these larger, fancier letters "capital letters", because they served a similar function as the "capitals" of old manuscripts. Many years later, when printing was invented, the capital letters were kept separate from the smaller ones that were used more frequently. These smaller letters were kept closer to the typesetter - in his "lower" case, as distinct from the capital letters in the "upper case". Nowadays typesetting is done electronically but the old terms survive.
-Joe: Excellent point! The connection between capital and kapital is something familiar to me - and the irony of the mistake did indeed cross my mind. Your summary of the etymology of Kapital and capital, however, is great.
Thanks!
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