Hello friends,
We hope everyone had a fun Holiday time. I sure did. We are looking forward to New Years. Wow can it really be 2007 already? Where does the time go indeed.
Another adventure story today. We had a group come in to buy some magic as gifts for a 13 year old.
Dave & I tag teamed each other because they were so excited and wanted to see “everything.”
Our clients made their selections, Hot Rod was one of them. They wanted us to teach them these effects. I explained that they shouldn’t know the secrets because the effects are not for them. To let the person they were intended for do their homework and fool them.
One of them said these were gifts for someone in Israel and he only understand Hebrew. That’s why they needed to be shown so they could teach him.
No problem with teaching them now but I now knew right that the Hot Rod wasn’t going to be a good one for him and I tried to explain that it won’t work in Hebrew and is meant to be done in English only. This statement didn’t make any sense to them of course because from their point of view, they pick any color they want and the rod changes to that color so why would language have any relevance at all.
I taught them the others and picked up the Hot Rod last. I asked how do you say ONE in Hebrew? It was a two or three syllable word that I couldn’t understand. I asked how would you spell it. He said A N D. I thought ot myself maybeit can work but would the receiver spell it like this or would he use Hebrew symbols? I tried with number two then, I knew for sure it was impossible. The amount of letters was at about 10 and he wasn’t done spelling yet.
So I showed him another paddle effect but he seemed disappointed and passed.
For those interested, I translated the numbers 1-6 in Hebrew and this is what I came up with. I was also surprised to see they are written out right to left. I noticed this as I was cutting and pasting.
1(ת’) אחד
2 (ת’) שניים, שתיים
3 (ש”ע) שלוש
4 (ת’) ארבע, ארבעה
5(ש”ע) חמש, חמישה
6 (ת’) שש, שישה
Tried as I might to get the Hebrew symbols to line up and put the numeric values to the left, the system wanted to put them on the right. It is frustrating to type in the mirror, so to speak.
So excuse any spelling errors in the bottom part of this post, I spell checked before I entered the Hebrew but not after just because I don’t want to affect the above writing.
I am now curious if this effect can be done the intended way in other languages or if maybe this effect was re-invented or modified for different cultures.
If any one has any other info about this effect or any other effect that can’t break the language barrier I would be very interested in what you have to say.
Until next time,
Thanks for reading.
Pete