Comments on: LOLCat Bible = infinite entertainment

By: Stephanie Willen Brown

Stephanie Willen Brown — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 06:01:59 +0000

on a related note, here is a video that explains the history of lolcats:

http://view.break.com/392548

By: Ida

Ida — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 18:56:31 +0000

This post and the comments have been a lot of fun. For a class in my Design and Technology program, I need to examine a digital media project based on Manovich’s Five Principles of New Media. I think I’ll use the LOLcat Bible project as my example. Thanks Danah and Martin.

By: Michael Chui

Michael Chui — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:51:00 +0000

danah,

You have broken the awesome ceiling and entered the indescribable, ineffable domain of better-than-awesome.

Thank you.

By: Julie Adair

Julie Adair — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 08:45:38 +0000

Hey, Danah!

I discovered Lolcats recently and it’s one of the things I most look forward to checking out each day. It even made it into Wired’s Geekopedia, for heaven’s sake!

Hope you’re well

Best

Julie

By: amy.leblanc

amy.leblanc — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 15:57:11 +0000

i’m really enjoying this discussion because i’m a fascinated by linguistics + i love the LOLcat bible – for so, so many reasons. it’s a great cultural interpretation and the not-so-subtle jesting is fantastic.

the most often referenced anti-gay passage, as translated:

leviticus 18:22

22 No can has teh buttsecks wif teh mens. (hehe)

By: The Mennonite Lady

The Mennonite Lady — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 14:34:54 +0000

Wow, I’m a huge fan of this site and refer to it often for my work. I’d never known of this particluar translation of the Bible, but it really spoke to me!

After being raised Mennonite and moving from Lancaster PA to NYC, I realized that while I had spent many hours memorizing the King James Version of the Bible, my friends and colleagues had all been reading the classics.

After recently becoming more devoted to daily prayer and meditation, I decided to go back to my roots and really hunker-down and sink my teeth into the good ol’ KJV! Well upon cracking it open with absolute fervor, much to my dismay, I couldn’t understand a bloody word of it. This rather bothered me for some time, but now thanks to LOLCat and this site, I can laugh about it!

By: zephoria

zephoria — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 08:29:09 +0000

Zhasper – my understanding is that it depends on what you’re trying to actually study about a language. It also depends on whether or not that language is still spoken. I totally understand that there are methodological challenges to this approach but all of the linguists that I know make snarky comments about how they need to know the bible to do their work.

By: Zhasper

Zhasper — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 02:22:27 +0000

One of the primary language sources that most linguists use to analyze languages is the bible. Missionaries went around the world translating the bible into all sorts of local languages so it’s the only source text that exists in most languages.

Hrm. See, I live with a linguist. I’ve not discussed this in *great* detail with him, only a little. The impression I got from him though was that most missionaries tend to have only basic lingustic training, and their translations tend to tell you more about the limitations of their training than the language it’s purportedly written in – anyone wanting to actually study the language will ignore the work done by missionaries and go onsite to study it first-hand.

You seem to be speaking to different linguists than me though… do you have any sources to back this up?

By: Charles H. Green

Charles H. Green — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 17:05:51 +0000

This is great stuff; thanks to danah for pointing it out, what a delight. I intend to blog on it myself, after I think some more why it’s so pleasing.

By: KG

KG — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 08:23:39 +0000

So brilliant and hilarious! Thanks for this. I’m going to post about this and refer my LOLcat-hungry readers to it.

Laughter = good. (I’d translate it into kitty pidgin, but I’m still working on mastering the syntax.)