LOLcat Translation of The Bible 61% Complete.

Boy talk about a serious rabbit hole… I just spent the last FOUR hours delving into the byzantine world of LOLcats.

If you’re not familiar, LOLcats are a meme that have been kicking around the internet for a couple of years. Here’s how it apparently started, a couple years ago, someone put up a photo of a cat with some silly broken English meant to represent the cat’s thoughts (because cats have notoriously bad subject-verb agreement skills). I guess the combo of cute cats, bad grammar, and a lot of homebound people with high speed internet turned out to be a potent one, because the thing really took off. From what I read, this little guy is considered the first LOLcat in history.

Google “LOLcat” and you will get like 300 million different pics of cats thinking the darndest (and gramatically-jankiest) things. But here’s where it gets interesting, much like TBTL (which is considered overly cute and cloying by most people) LOLcat speak has gone so inside to the power of inside, that’s it’s actually gotten kind of interesting.

To wit, the LOLcat world apparently has a god named “Ceiling Cat” (see below) who enjoys staring down on the world he created. It’s so involved now, that someone launched a project to translate the entire King James Bible into LOLcat speak.

Here’s some Genesis for you:

Boreded Ceiling Cat makinkgz Urf n stuffs

1. Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.
2. Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.
3. At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.
4. An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.
5. An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!
6. An Ceiling Cat sayed, im in ur waterz makin a ceiling. But he no yet make a ur. An he maded a hole in teh Ceiling.
7. An Ceiling Cat doed teh skiez with waterz down An waterz up. It happen.
8. An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has teh firmmint wich iz funny bibel naim 4 ceiling, so wuz teh twoth day.
9. An Ceiling Cat gotted all teh waterz in ur base, An Ceiling Cat hadz dry placez cuz kittehs DO NOT WANT get wet.10 An Ceiling Cat called no waterz urth and waters oshun. Iz good.

If you are still reading this post, you are probably either mildly retarded, or you are actually Ceiling Cat and you’re reading this just to keep tabs on things. Since you are clearly as weirdly obsessed with this as I am, here’s one more bonus, someone put together a handy guide to writing LOLcat. Think of it as the Strunk & White of Jibber-Jabber.

LOLCat speak is a mixture of IM, texting and pidgin english that has become hugely popular. I Can Has Cheeseburger is a classic example of putting text/IM language together with animal pictures (especially cats and kittens). This is an evolving language with specific rules:

1) Mis-decline verbs, especially misuse the verb “to be”
2) Misuse gerunds
3) Overuse prepositional phrases
4) Blatant rearrangement of syntax
5) Incorrect plurals and past-tense verbs
6) “noun” your adjectives. (For instance, the adjective “blue” can become the noun “blueness”)
7) Improper pronouns
8 ) Drop the articles (”a”, “and”, “the”) in favor of adding “-age” to the end of a noun
9) Use “younger” words (”kitty” versus “cat”, “fuzzy” versus “furry”, etc.)
10) Use the word “with” inappropriately.

1) Think like a little kid / cat / dog / goldfish, and get hukd on foniks
2) I cannot stress this enough: Vowels are your friends! Do not neglect vowels!! We’re speaking LolKitteh here, not text messaging! (My advice: use alternate vowels, Y’s are particularly handy, but don’t overuse them.)
3) Extra W’s and H’s (”awl” instead of “all”)
4) Z’s instead of S’s are easy
5) Double-letters versus single letters are always fun
6) Don’t be afraid to further pluralize things, including your verbs
7) Remember that the word “THE” must always be spelled “TEH”