"הילד סופר שלוש חולצות."

Translation: The boy counts three shirts.

[zion11dotcom]

ha-yeled sofer shalosh khultzot

[Nathan173901]

You may find it interesting that e.g. the Polish transcription is different: "hajeled sofer szalosz chulcot". We only need one letter (c) for צ, no need of "tz" or "ts".

[AaronPhili10]

סופר means counting AND author

[JetpackBrian]

What's the connection between סופר and ספר? Did ספר originally mean an accounting book and later generalize to all books or something?

[danny912421]

No. Accounting books are a modern thing. The word ספר is Biblical. It probably came from scribes who were copying the Tora, they had to count every letter, to make sure it was perfectly copied. So, basically סופר is both an author (scribe) and a counter (person).

[YardenNB]

According to Wiktionary, the first Hebrew word of this root is ספר /sefer/, borrowed from Akkadian (different vowels) where it meant "a written message", "letter" if you will. From there it was used in making lists, hence counting etc.

[BethBurnha]

Why isn't it written as שלושה? Is חוצות feminine and wouldn't the number need to be feminine also?

[danny912421]

Well, שלוש is feminine. שלושה is masculine.