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A mondegreen () is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning. Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense. The American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, recalling a childhood memory of her mother reading the Scottish ballad " The Bonny Earl of Murray" (from Thomas Percy's 1765 book ''
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry The ''Reliques of Ancient English Poetry'' (sometimes known as ''Reliques of Ancient Poetry'' or simply Percy's ''Reliques'') is a collection of ballads and popular songs collected by Bishop Thomas Percy and published in 1765. Sources The basis ...
''), and mishearing the words "layd him on the green" as "Lady Mondegreen". Drawings by
Bernarda Bryson Bernarda Bryson Shahn (March 7, 1903 – December 12, 2004) was an American painter and lithographer. She also wrote and illustrated children's books including ''The Zoo of Zeus'' and ''Gilgamesh.'' The artist Ben Shahn was her "life companion ...
. Reprinted in: Contains the essays "The Death of Lady Mondegreen" and "The Quest of Lady Mondegreen".
"Mondegreen" was included in the 2000 edition of the ''Random House Webster's College Dictionary'', and in the ''
Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a c ...
'' in 2002. Merriam-Webster's ''Collegiate Dictionary'' added the word in 2008.


Etymology

In a 1954 essay in '' Harper's Magazine'', Sylvia Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the last line of the first stanza from the seventeenth-century
ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or '' ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...
"
The Bonnie Earl O' Moray "The Bonnie Earl o' Moray" (Child 181,''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads'', Edited by Francis James Child in Five Volumes, Dover Publications, Minneola, New York, 2006. Roud 334) is a popular Scottish ballad, which may date from as early ...
". She wrote: The correct fourth line is, "And ''laid him on the green".'' Wright explained the need for a new term:


Psychology

People are more likely to notice what they expect rather than things that are not part of their everyday experiences; this is known as
confirmation bias Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring ...
. Similarly, one may mistake an unfamiliar stimulus for a familiar and more plausible version. For example, to consider a well-known mondegreen in the song " Purple Haze", one would be more likely to hear Jimi Hendrix singing that he is about to ''kiss this guy'' than that he is about to ''kiss the sky''. Similarly, if a lyric uses words or phrases that the listener is unfamiliar with, they may be misheard as using more familiar terms. The creation of mondegreens may be driven in part by cognitive dissonance, as the listener finds it psychologically uncomfortable to listen to a song and not make out the words.
Steven Connor Steven Kevin Connor, FBA (born 11 February 1955) is a British literary scholar. Since 2012, he has been the Grace 2 Professor of English in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was formerly the academic direct ...
suggests that mondegreens are the result of the brain's constant attempts to make sense of the world by making assumptions to fill in the gaps when it cannot clearly determine what it is hearing. Connor sees mondegreens as the "wrenchings of nonsense into sense". This dissonance will be most acute when the lyrics are in a language in which the listener is fluent. On the other hand, Steven Pinker has observed that mondegreen mishearings tend to be ''less'' plausible than the original lyrics, and that once a listener has "locked in" to a particular misheard interpretation of a song's lyrics, it can remain unquestioned, even when that plausibility becomes strained (see
mumpsimus A mumpsimus ( ) is a "traditional custom obstinately adhered to however unreasonable it may be", or "someone who obstinately clings to an error, bad habit or prejudice, even after the foible has been exposed and the person humiliated; also, any er ...
). Pinker gives the example of a student "stubbornly" mishearing the chorus to " Venus" ("I'm your Venus") as "I'm your
penis A penis (plural ''penises'' or ''penes'' () is the primary sexual organ that male animals use to inseminate females (or hermaphrodites) during copulation. Such organs occur in many animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate, but males d ...
", and being surprised that the song was allowed on the
radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30  hertz (Hz) and 300  gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a tr ...
. The phenomenon may, in some cases, be triggered by people hearing "what they want to hear", as in the case of the song " Louie Louie": parents heard obscenities in the Kingsmen recording where none existed. James Gleick claims that the mondegreen is a distinctly modern phenomenon. Without the improved communication and language standardization brought about by radio, he believes there would have been no way to recognize and discuss this shared experience. Just as mondegreens transform songs based on experience, a folk song learned by repetition often is transformed over time when sung by people in a region where some of the song's references have become obscure. A classic example is " The Golden Vanity", which contains the line "As she sailed upon the lowland sea". British immigrants carried the song to Appalachia, where singers, not knowing what the term '' lowland sea'' refers to, transformed it over generations from "lowland" to "lonesome".


Examples


In songs

The national anthem of the United States is highly susceptible to the creation of mondegreens, two in the first line. Francis Scott Key's " Star-Spangled Banner" begins with the line "O say can you see, by the dawn's early light". This has been accidentally and deliberately misinterpreted as "José, can you see", another example of the Hobson-Jobson effect, countless times. The second half of the line has been misheard as well, as "by the donzerly light", or other variants. This has led to many people believing that "donzerly" is an actual word. Religious songs, learned by ear (and often by children), are another common source of mondegreens. The most-cited example is "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear" (from the line in the hymn "Keep Thou My Way" by
Fanny Crosby Frances Jane van Alstyne (née Crosby; March 24, 1820 – February 12, 1915), more commonly known as Fanny J. Crosby, was an American mission worker, poet, lyricist, and composer. She was a prolific hymnist, writing more than 8,000 hymns ...
and Theodore E. Perkins: "Kept by Thy tender care, gladly the cross I'll bear").
Jon Carroll Jon Carroll (born November 6, 1943) was a columnist for the '' San Francisco Chronicle'' from 1982, when he succeeded columnist Charles McCabe, to 2015, when he retired. His column appeared on the back page of the ''Chronicle''s Datebook section ...
and many others quote it as "Gladly the cross ''I'd'' bear"; also, here, hearers are confused by the sentence with the unusual object-subject-verb (OSV) word order. The song " I Was on a Boat That Day" by Old Dominion features a reference to this mondegreen. Mondegreens expanded as a phenomenon with radio, and, especially, the growth of rock and roll (and even more so with rap). Amongst the most-reported examples are: #"There's a bathroom on the right" (the line at the end of each verse of " Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival: "There's a bad moon on the rise"). #"Scuse me while I kiss this guy" (from a lyric in the song " Purple Haze" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience: "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky"). #"The girl with colitis goes by" (from a lyric in the Beatles song " Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds": "The girl with kaleidoscope eyes") Both Creedence's John Fogerty and Hendrix eventually acknowledged these mishearings by deliberately singing the "mondegreen" versions of their songs in concert. " Blinded by the Light", a cover of a
Bruce Springsteen Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949) is an American singer and songwriter. He has released 21 studio albums, most of which feature his backing band, the E Street Band. Originally from the Jersey Shore, he is an originato ...
song by Manfred Mann's Earth Band, contains what has been called "probably the most misheard lyric of all time"., Blogcritics Music The phrase "revved up like a deuce", altered from Springsteen's original "cut loose like a deuce", both lyrics referring to the hot rodders slang ''deuce'' (short for deuce coupé) for a 1932 Ford coupé, is frequently misheard as "wrapped up like a douche". Springsteen himself has joked about the phenomenon, claiming that it was not until Manfred Mann rewrote the song to be about a "feminine hygiene product" that the song became popular. Another commonly cited example of a song susceptible to mondegreens is
Nirvana ( , , ; sa, निर्वाण} ''nirvāṇa'' ; Pali: ''nibbāna''; Prakrit: ''ṇivvāṇa''; literally, "blown out", as in an oil lamp Richard Gombrich, ''Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benāres to Modern Colomb ...
's " Smells Like Teen Spirit", with the line "here we are now, entertain us" variously being misinterpreted as "here we are now, ''in containers''", and "here we are now, ''hot potatoes''", amongst other renditions. Rap and hip hop lyrics may be particularly susceptible to being misheard because they do not necessarily follow standard pronunciations. The delivery of rap lyrics relies heavily upon an often regional pronunciation or non-traditional accenting of words and their
phonemes In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
to adhere to the artist's stylizations and the lyrics' written structure. This issue is exemplified in controversies over alleged transcription errors in
Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Univers ...
's 2010 ''Anthology of Rap.''


Standardized and recorded mondegreens

Sometimes, the modified version of a lyric becomes standard, as is the case with " The Twelve Days of Christmas". The original has "four colly birds" (''colly'' means ''black''; compare ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is a comedy written by William Shakespeare 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One subplot involves a conflict a ...
'': "Brief as the lightning in the collied night"); by the turn of the twentieth century, these had been replaced by ''calling'' birds, which is the lyric used in the now-standard 1909
Frederic Austin Frederic William Austin (30 March 187210 April 1952) was an English baritone singer, a musical teacher and composer in the period 1905–30. He is best remembered for his restoration and production of ''The Beggar's Opera'' by John Gay and Joha ...
version. A number of misheard lyrics have been recorded, turning a mondegreen into a real title. The song " Sea Lion Woman", recorded in 1939 by Christine and Katherine Shipp, was performed by Nina Simone under the title "
See Line Woman "Sea Lion Woman" (also "Sealion Woman", "Sea-Line Woman", "See heLyin' Woman", "She Lyin' Woman", "See-Line Woman", or "C-Line Woman") is a traditional African American folk song originally used as a children's playground song. History The song ...
". According to the liner notes from the compilation ''A Treasury of Library of Congress Field Recordings'', the correct title of this playground song might also be "See heLyin' Woman" or "C-Line Woman". Jack Lawrence's misinterpretation of the French phrase "pauvre Jean" ("poor John") as the identically pronounced "pauvres gens" ("poor people") led to the translation of ''La Goualante du pauvre Jean'' ("The Ballad of Poor John") as " The Poor People of Paris", a hit song in 1956.


In literature

'' A Monk Swimming'' by author Malachy McCourt is so titled because of a childhood mishearing of a phrase from the Catholic rosary prayer, Hail Mary. "Amongst women" became "a monk swimmin'". The title and plot of the short science fiction story "Come You Nigh: Kay Shuns" ("Com-mu-ni-ca-tions") by Lawrence A. Perkins, in ''
Analog Science Fiction and Fact ''Analog Science Fiction and Fact'' is an American science fiction magazine published under various titles since 1930. Originally titled ''Astounding Stories of Super-Science'', the first issue was dated January 1930, published by William ...
'' magazine (April 1970), deals with securing interplanetary radio communications by encoding them with mondegreens. ''Olive, the Other Reindeer'' is a 1997 children's book by Vivian Walsh, which borrows its title from a mondegreen of the line, "all of the other reindeer" in the song " Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". The book was adapted into an animated Christmas special in 1999. The travel guide book series
Lonely Planet Lonely Planet is a travel guide book publisher. Founded in Australia in 1973, the company has printed over 150 million books. History Early years Lonely Planet was founded by married couple Maureen and Tony Wheeler. In 1972, they embark ...
is named after the misheard phrase "lovely planet" sung by Joe Cocker in Matthew Moore's song "Space Captain".


In film

A monologue of mondegreens appears in the 1971 film '' Carnal Knowledge''. The camera focuses on actress Candice Bergen laughing as she recounts various phrases that fooled her as a child, including "Round John Virgin" (instead of “‘Round yon virgin...”) and "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear" (instead of “Gladly the cross I’d bear”). The title of the 2013 film '' Ain't Them Bodies Saints'' is a misheard lyric from a folk song; director David Lowery decided to use it because it evoked the "classical, regional" feel of 1970s rural Texas. In the 1994 film '' The Santa Clause'', a child identifies a ladder that Santa uses to get to the roof from its label: The Rose Suchak Ladder Company. He states that this is "just like the poem", misinterpreting "out on the lawn there arose such a clatter" from '' A Visit from St. Nicholas'' as "Out on the lawn, there's a Rose Suchak ladder".


In television

Mondegreens have been used in many television advertising campaigns, including: * An advertisement for the 2012 Volkswagen Passat touting the car's audio system shows a number of people singing incorrect versions of the line "Burning out his fuse up here alone" from the Elton John/ Bernie Taupin song " Rocket Man", until a woman listening to the song in a Passat realizes the correct words. * A 2002 advertisement for T-Mobile shows spokeswoman
Catherine Zeta-Jones Catherine Zeta-Jones (; born 25 September 1969) is a Welsh actress. Known for her versatility, she is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and a Tony Award. In 2010, she was appointed ...
helping to correct a man who has misunderstood the chorus of
Def Leppard Def Leppard are an English rock band formed in 1976 in Sheffield. Since 1992, the band has consisted of Rick Savage (bass, backing vocals), Joe Elliott (lead vocals), Rick Allen (drums, backing vocals), Phil Collen (guitar, backing vocals), ...
's "
Pour Some Sugar On Me "Pour Some Sugar on Me" is a song by the English rock band Def Leppard from their 1987 album '' Hysteria''. It reached number 2 on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100 on 23 July 1988, behind "Hold On to the Nights" by Richard Marx. "Pour Some Sugar ...
" as "pour some shook up ramen". * A series of advertisements for Maxell audio cassette tapes, produced by Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury, shown in 1989 and 1990, featured misheard versions of "
Israelites The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan. The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele o ...
" (e.g., "Me ears are alight") by Desmond Dekker and " Into the Valley" by The Skids as heard by users of other brands of tape. * A 1987 series of advertisements for Kellogg's ''Nut 'n Honey Crunch'' featured a joke in which one person asks "What's for breakfast?" and is told "Nut 'N' Honey", which is misheard as "Nothing, honey".


Other notable examples

The traditional game Chinese whispers ("Telephone" or "Gossip" in North America) involves mishearing a whispered sentence to produce successive mondegreens that gradually distort the original sentence as it is repeated by successive listeners. Among schoolchildren in the US, daily rote recitation of the
Pledge of Allegiance The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States is a patriotic recited verse that promises allegiance to the flag of the United States and the republic of the United States of America. The first version, with a text different from the one used ...
has long provided opportunities for the genesis of mondegreens. Speech-to-text functionality in modern smartphone messaging apps and search or assist functions may be hampered by faulty
speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the ...
. It has been noted that in text messaging, users often leave uncorrected mondegreens as a joke or puzzle for the recipient to solve. This wealth of mondegreens has proven to be a fertile ground for study by speech scientists and psychologists.


Notable collections

The classicist and linguist Steve Reece has collected examples of English mondegreens in song lyrics, religious creeds and liturgies, commercials and advertisements, and jokes and riddles. He has used this collection to shed light on the process of "junctural metanalysis" during the oral transmission of the ancient Greek epics, the ''
Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Ody ...
'' and ''
Odyssey The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the '' Iliad'', ...
.''


Reverse mondegreen

A reverse mondegreen is the intentional production, in speech or writing, of words or phrases that seem to be gibberish but disguise meaning. A prominent example is '' Mairzy Doats'', a 1943 novelty song by Milton Drake,
Al Hoffman Al Hoffman (September 25, 1902 – July 21, 1960) was an American song composer. He was a hit songwriter active in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, usually co-writing with others and responsible for number-one hits through each decade, many of wh ...
, and Jerry Livingston. The lyrics are a reverse mondegreen, made up of same-sounding words or phrases (sometimes also referred to as "oronyms"), so pronounced (and written) as to challenge the listener (or reader) to interpret them: ::Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey ::A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you? The clue to the meaning is contained in the bridge of the song: ::If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey, ::Sing "
Mare A mare is an adult female horse or other equine. In most cases, a mare is a female horse over the age of three, and a filly is a female horse three and younger. In Thoroughbred horse racing, a mare is defined as a female horse more than fo ...
s eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy." This makes it clear that the last line is "A kid'll eat ivy, too; wouldn't you?"


Deliberate mondegreen

Two authors have written books of supposed foreign-language poetry that are actually mondegreens of nursery rhymes in English. Luis van Rooten's pseudo-French '' Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames'' includes critical, historical, and interpretive apparatus, as does John Hulme's ''Mörder Guss Reims'', attributed to a fictitious German poet. Both titles sound like the phrase " Mother Goose Rhymes". Both works can also be considered soramimi, which produces different meanings when interpreted in another language. The genre of animutation is based on deliberate mondegreen. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart produced a similar effect in his canon "
Difficile Lectu "Difficile lectu", K. 559, is a canon composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The music, in F major, is set for three singers. The words are probably by Mozart himself. The work was entered by the composer into his personal catalog on 2 September 17 ...
" (Difficult to Read), which, though ostensibly in Latin, is actually an opportunity for scatological humor in both German and Italian. Some performers and writers have used deliberate mondegreens to create
double entendre A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially ...
s. The phrase "if you see Kay" ( F-U-C-K) has been employed many times, notably as a line from
James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...
's 1922 novel '' Ulysses''. "Mondegreen" is a song by Yeasayer on their 2010 album, '' Odd Blood''. The lyrics are intentionally obscure (for instance, "Everybody sugar in my bed" and "Perhaps the pollen in the air turns us into a stapler") and spoken hastily to encourage the mondegreen effect.
Anguish Languish The Anguish Languish is an ersatz language constructed from similar-sounding English language words. It was created by Howard L. Chace circa 1940, and he later collected his stories and poems in the book ''Anguish Languish'' (Prentice-Hall, 1956) ...
is an ersatz language created by Howard L. Chace. A play on the words "English Language," it is based on homophonic transformations of English words and consists entirely of deliberate mondegreens that seem nonsensical in print but are more easily understood when spoken aloud. A notable example is the story "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" ("
Little Red Riding Hood "Little Red Riding Hood" is a European fairy tale about a young girl and a sly wolf. Its origins can be traced back to several pre-17th century European folk tales. The two best known versions were written by Charles Perrault and the Bro ...
"), which appears in his collection of stories and poems, ''Anguish Languish'' (Prentice-Hall, 1956).


Related linguistic phenomena

Closely related categories are Hobson-Jobson, where a word from a foreign language is homophonically translated into one's own language, e.g. "cockroach" from Spanish ''cucaracha'', and '' soramimi'', a Japanese term for deliberate homophonic misinterpretation of words for humor. An unintentionally incorrect use of similar-sounding words or phrases, resulting in a changed meaning, is a
malapropism A malapropism (also called a malaprop, acyrologia, or Dogberryism) is the mistaken use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, sometimes humorous utterance. An example is the statement attributed t ...
. If there is a connection in meaning, it may be called an eggcorn. If a person stubbornly continues to mispronounce a word or phrase after being corrected, that person has committed a mumpsimus. Related phenomena include: * Earworm * Eggcorn *
Holorime Holorime (or holorhyme) is a form of rhyme where two very similar sequences of sounds can form phrases composed of different words and with different meanings. For example, the two lines of Miles Kington's poem "A Lowlands Holiday Ends in Enjoyabl ...
* Homophonic translation * Hypercorrection *
Phono-semantic matching Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with phonetically and semantically similar words or roots fro ...
* Spoonerism * Syntactic ambiguity


Non-English languages


Croatian

Queen Queen or QUEEN may refer to: Monarchy * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom ** List of queens regnant * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...
's song " Another One Bites The Dust" has a long-standing history as a mondegreen in Croatian, misheard as "''Radovan baca daske''", which means "Radovan (a male given name) throws planks". This might also be a soramimi.


Dutch

In Dutch, mondegreens are popularly referred to as ''Mama appelsap'' ("Mommy applejuice"), from the
Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the " King of Pop", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Over ...
song ''
Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin" is a song by American singer Michael Jackson recorded for his sixth studio album ''Thriller (album), Thriller'' (1982). It is the opening track of the album and was released as its fourth single on May 8, 1983, by Epi ...
'' which features the lyrics ''Mama-se mama-sa ma-ma-coo-sa'', and was once misheard as ''Mama say mama sa mam ppelsap''. The Dutch radio station
3FM NPO 3FM is a Dutch rhythmic CHR radio station controlled by public broadcaster NPO. The vast majority of the songs played on-air are rock, alternative, indie and pop, though dance and Mega Top 30 tracks may also air at times. History As R ...
show ''Superrradio'' (originally ''Timur Open Radio''), run by Timur Perlin and Ramon, featured an item in which listeners were encouraged to send in mondegreens under the name "Mama appelsap". The segment was popular for years.


French

In French, the phenomenon is also known as ''hallucination auditive'', especially when referring to pop songs. The title of the film '' La Vie en Rose'' ("Life In Pink" literally; "Life Through Rose-Coloured Glasses" more broadly), depicting the life of
Édith Piaf Édith Piaf (, , ; born Édith Giovanna Gassion, ; December 19, 1915– October 10, 1963) was a French singer, lyricist and actress. Noted as France's national chanteuse, she was one of the country's most widely known international stars. Pi ...
, can be mistaken for ''L'Avion Rose'' ("The Pink Airplane"). The title of the 1983 French novel '' Le Thé au harem d'Archi Ahmed'' ("Tea in the Harem of Archi Ahmed") by
Mehdi Charef Mehdi Charef (born 21 October 1952) is a French film director and screenwriter of Algerian descent. He has worked on eleven films between 1985 and 2007. His film '' Le thé au harem d'Archimède'' was screened in the Un Certain Regard secti ...
(and the 1985 movie of the same name) is based on the main character mishearing ''le théorème d'Archimède'' ("the theorem of Archimedes") in his mathematics class. A classic example in French is similar to the "Lady Mondegreen" anecdote: in his 1962 collection of children's quotes ''La Foire aux cancres'', the humorist Jean-Charles refers to a misunderstood lyric of " La Marseillaise" (the French national anthem): ''Entendez-vous ... mugir ces féroces soldats'' ("Do you hear those savage soldiers roar?") is misheard as ''...Séféro, ce soldat'' ("that soldier Séféro").


German

Mondegreens are a well-known phenomenon in German, especially where non-German songs are concerned. They are sometimes called, after a well-known example, ''Agathe Bauer''-songs (" I got the power", a song by Snap!, misinterpreted as a German female name). Journalist Axel Hacke published a series of books about them, beginning with ''Der weiße Neger Wumbaba'' ("The White Negro Wumbaba", a mishearing of the line ''der weiße Nebel wunderbar'' from " Der Mond ist aufgegangen"). In urban legend, children's paintings of nativity scenes, occasionally include next to the Child, Mary, Joseph, and so on, an additional, laughing creature known as the ''Owi''. The reason is to be found in the line ''Gottes Sohn! O wie lacht / Lieb' aus Deinem göttlichen Mund'' ("God's Son! Oh, how does love laugh out of Thy divine mouth!") from the song " Silent Night". The subject is ''Lieb'', a poetic contraction of ''die Liebe'' leaving off the final ''-e'' and the definite article, so that the phrase might be misunderstood as being about a person named ''Owi'' laughing "in a loveable manner". ''Owi lacht'' has been used as the title of at least one book about Christmas and Christmas songs.


Hebrew

Ghil'ad Zuckermann Ghil'ad Zuckermann ( he, גלעד צוקרמן, ; ) is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity. Zuckermann is Professor of Linguistics and Ch ...
mentions the example ''mukhrakhím liyót saméakh'' (, which means "we must be happy", with a grammatical error) as a mondegreen of the original ''úru 'akhím belév saméakh'' (, which means "wake up, brothers, with a happy heart").P. 248 in
Ghil'ad Zuckermann Ghil'ad Zuckermann ( he, גלעד צוקרמן, ; ) is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity. Zuckermann is Professor of Linguistics and Ch ...
(2003), '' Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew''
Palgrave Macmillan
/
Although this line is taken from the extremely well-known song " Háva Nagíla" ("Let’s be happy"), given the Hebrew high-register of ''úru'' ( "wake up!"), Israelis often mishear it. An Israeli site dedicated to Hebrew mondegreens has coined the term ''avatiach'' (, Hebrew for " watermelon") for "mondegreen", named for a common mishearing of Shlomo Artzi's award-winning 1970 song "Ahavtia" ("I loved her", using a form uncommon in spoken Hebrew).


Polish

A paper in
phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
cites memoirs of the poet
Antoni Słonimski Antoni Słonimski (15 November 1895 – 4 July 1976) was a Polish poet, artist, journalist, playwright and prose writer, president of the Union of Polish Writers in 1956–1959 during the Polish October, known for his devotion to social justi ...
, who confessed that in the recited poem '' Konrad Wallenrod'' he used to hear ''zwierz Alpuhary'' ("a beast of Alpujarras") rather than ''z wież Alpuhary'' ("from the towers of Alpujarras").Zygmunt Saloni
Transkrypcja fonologiczna tekstu polskiego w praktyce uniwersyteckiej
''Język Polski'', vol. XCV, issue 4, 2015, pp. 325–332


Russian

In 1875 Fyodor Dostoyevsky cited a line from Fyodor Glinka's song "Troika" (1825), колокольчик, дар Валдая ("the bell, gift of Valday"), stating that it is usually understood as колокольчик, дарвалдая ("the bell ''darvaldaying''"—supposedly an
onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...
of ringing sounds).Достоевский Ф. М. Полное собрание сочинений: В 30 тт. Л., 1980. Т. 21. С. 264.


See also

* Am I Right – website with a large collection of misheard lyrics *
Bushism Bushisms are unconventional statements, phrases, pronunciations, possible Freudian slips, malapropisms, as well as semantic or linguistic errors in the public speaking of former President of the United States George W. Bush. The term ''Bushism' ...
* Folk etymology * Mad Gab * Pareidolia * Parody music *
Yanny or Laurel Yanny or Laurel is an auditory illusion which became popular in May 2018, in which a short audio recording of speech can be heard as one of two words. 53 percent of over 500,000 respondents to a Twitter poll reported hearing a man saying the wo ...
* Bennie and the Jets * '' soramimi'' Japanese version of the mondegreen


Notes and references


Explanatory notes


Citations


Further reading

* Connor, Steven
''Earslips: Of Mishearings and Mondegreens''
2009. *
Maria Konnikova Maria Konnikova (βορν 1984) is a Russian-American writer with a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University. Konnikova has worked as a television producer, written for several magazines and online publications, and written three ''New Y ...
. ''Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy'', 2014
Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy
* Edwards, Gavin. ''Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy'', 1995. * Edwards, Gavin. ''When a Man Loves a Walnut'', 1997. * Edwards, Gavin. ''He's Got the Whole World in His Pants'', 1996. * Edwards, Gavin. ''Deck the Halls with Buddy Holly'', 1998. * Gwynne, Fred. ''Chocolate Moose for Dinner'', 1988. * Norman, Philip. ''Your Walrus Hurt the One You Love: Malapropisms, Mispronunciations, and Linguistic Cock-ups'', 1988. .


External links

{{Wiktionary * Snopes.com:
The Lady and the Mondegreen
(misheard Christmas songs). * Pamela Licalzi O'Connell:

, ''The New York Times'', 9 April 1998. 1950s neologisms Humour Phonology Psychoacoustics Semantics