神は偉大 kami wa idai God is Great

神 (kami) is god and God in one word, the kami of a shrine and the Christian deity alike; は (wa) marks the subject; 偉大 (idai) is great by excellence, outstanding, and where the same characters can mean huge in Chinese, in Japanese they cannot. The four characters are written as a title is written, with the closing word of the sentence left off, and a Japanese reader completes it without thinking.

神は偉大 is a correct translation of the English sentence, and the completed sentence has a fixed home in Japanese that a buyer should know: 神は偉大なり, God is great, is the Japanese for the Islamic takbīr, Allāhu akbar, in the encyclopedias and the histories, while the Japanese Bible says the LORD is great with a plainer word, 大 (dai), and always has.

The English has the same double life, Great is the LORD and the takbīr's usual rendering in one phrase, and the design carries it honestly: a Christian reader hears the Psalm, a Japanese reader may hear the other confession first, and the words are true in both. God is Great in Japanese is 神は偉大 which is read kami wa idai. 神 (kami) is god, and 偉大 (idai) means great in the sense of mighty or magnificent, not large.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 神は偉大.

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