Language Matters
Even Racists Got the Blues.
I used to see a lot of this stuff when I lived in Kansas City. On tea-towels, on stained glass, on tattoos, on signs at festivals, and on t-shirts.
You could see it coming too. People would look up dictionaries, or single word translations online, or ask me the meaning of a word while dismissing context and grammar and anything that might actually be relevant to that meaning.
But this is particularly hilarious. Like the writer of the post I spent a while wondering what on earth was trying to be said on this t-shirt - but I never got there, despite knowing what each of the three words mean.
The way to reverse translate this nonsense is to do it the same way it was translated i.e. one word at a time, in isolation, looking at every possible meaning of that word in English, as if it were a code rather than a language.
The post needs to be read until the end, because it’s not just wrong, indeed very wrong, but in fact in the only way it’s right it’s still wrong and fantastically funny in how it is wrong.
For what they think they mean, and for just how bad it is, read Even Racists Got the Blues by the Geeky Gaeilgeoir.
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