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A '''mondegreen''' is the misinterpretation of a line or lyric in a song due to ]. A '''mondegreen''' is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song, due to near ].


== Etymology == == Etymology ==

Revision as of 19:25, 17 July 2008

It has been suggested that Soramimi and Talk:Mondegreen#Merger proposal be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since May 2008.

A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song, due to near homophony.

Etymology

The American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term mondegreen in an essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," which was published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954. In the essay, Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the final line of the first stanza from the 17th century ballad "The Bonnie Earl O' Murray." She wrote:

When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl Amurray,
And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green." As Wright explained the need for a new term, "The point about what I shall hereafter call mondegreens, since no one else has thought up a word for them, is that they are better than the original."

Other examples Wright suggested are:

  • Surely Good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life ("Surely goodness and mercy…" from Psalm 23)
  • The wild, strange battle cry "Haffely, Gaffely, Gaffely, Gonward." ("Half a league, half a league,/ Half a league onward," from "The Charge of the Light Brigade")

The columnists William Safire of The New York Times and, later, Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle have long been popularizers of the term and collectors of mondegreens. They may have been the chief links between Wright's work and the general popularity of the notion today.

In 2008, it was announced that the word had been added to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

Role in culture

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While mondegreens are a common occurrence for children, many adults have their own collection, particularly with regard to popular music.

Quite a few mondegreens may be seen in closed-captioned live television broadcasting of impromptu speeches, interviews, etc. (for example, a local news report of a "grand parade" might be captioned as a "Grandpa raid"). The prevalence of mondegreens in this context arises in part from the use of stenotype machines and the need for captions to keep up with the fast pace of programs. This machine is used not to type out words directly as a common keyboard but rather to record the syllables of the words being spoken. Thus, the stenographic recording is a phonetic transcription of the words being spoken. Software is then used to translate the phonetic syllables into proper words. Given some unusual syllabic constructions, and the sophistication of the software, errors come in as the system tries to distinguish where the word break is in the syllable stream. Typically, the software uses pre-programmed information that matches syllable clusters to written forms, then suggests captions from which a human "captionist" chooses. Mistakes may come from inadequacies in the program's recognition capability, from the failure to provide the software with vocabulary specific to the context, from the captionist's own mishearing of the words, or from the need for the captionist to make a decision before an ambiguous statement is made clear by what is said next.

In popular culture

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See also: Soramimi

Some mondegreens arise from "false friends" or false cognates. In both cases a phrase in one language may be misheard as a semi-sensical phrase in another language. The humorous aspect of these has given rise to a music video genre known as animutation, in which music in a different language (often Japanese, although others such as Swedish exist) is "misheard" into English (known as Soramimi when different languages are used), and illustrated. Engrish mondegreens can also occur when English lyrics are reproduced by singers of Asian languages.

This may happen in the opposite direction as well: i.e., English words of a song are misheard, intentionally or not, to mean something else in a native language, often with a humorous effect. An example is a Russian joke in which the song "Can't Buy Me Love" was announced as "кинь бабе лом" (IPA: [kinʲ babʲe lom]), which roughly translates as "Throw a crowbar to the old woman".

Examples in music

  • The "top 3" mondegreens submitted regularly to mondegreen expert Jon Carroll are:
  1. Gladly the cross-eyed bear (from the line in the hymn "Keep Thou My Way" by Fanny Crosby, "Kept by Thy tender care, gladly the cross I'll bear") Carroll and many others quote it as "Gladly the cross I'd bear". Ed McBain used the mondegreen as the title of a novel. Also, this mondegreen is paraphrased by the band They Might Be Giants in their song "Hide Away Folk Family" (Sadly the cross-eyed bear's been put to sleep behind the stairs, and his shoes are laced with irony.)
  2. 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")
  3. 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy (from a lyric in the song "Purple Haze", by Jimi Hendrix: "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky").
Both Creedence's John Fogerty and Hendrix eventually capitalized on these mishearings and deliberately sang the "mondegreen" versions of their songs in concert.
  • The film "Angels In The Outfield" makes a reference to the mishearing of mistakes "O, say can you see" from The Star-Spangled Banner as "José can you see?". Bill Dana used this mondegreen in a comedy bit as the Hispanic character José Jimenez. In Beverly Cleary's children's novel Ramona the Pest, Ramona refers to the "Dawnzer lee light" (dawn's early light).
  • The line "Try to detect it" from Devo's song "Whip It" is often misheard as "Tattoo Detective."
  • "A wean in a manger," using the Scottish word for a baby, instead of "Away in a Manger." Gervase Phinn used "A Wayne in a Manger" as the title of a book about a children's nativity play.
  • "Tell the Huns it's time for me" (from the song "Beneath the Lights of Home (In a Little Sleepy Town)" sung by Deanna Durbin in Nice Girl? (1941): "Turn the hands of time for me") on the BBC radio programme Quote Unquote in 2002.
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wooden shoe (or, if you prefer, "wouldn't chew").
The only clue to the actual meaning of the words is contained in the bridge:
If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey,
Sing "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy."
From this point, the ear can figure out that the last line of the refrain is "A kid'll eat ivy too; wouldn't you?", but this last line is only sung in the song as a mondegreen.
  • The Joni Mitchell cover of the Lambert, Hendricks & Ross song "Twisted" includes a mondegreen: the original lyric They all laughed at A. Graham Bell was misheard and subsequently recorded by Mitchell as They all laugh at angry young men.
  • Mike Sutton, a mondegreen director on YouTube with the username "Buffalax", uploaded several non-English music videos which were edited to include subtitles of the written English approximation of the video's original language's sound. These include Internet memes such as Moskau (originally German), Tunak Tunak Tun (originally Punjabi), Indian Thriller (originally Telegu) and Benny Lava (originally Tamil). The latter, involving the video for Prabhu Deva Sundaram's song, "Kalluri Vaanil" from the Indian Tamil movie, Pennin Manathai Thottu, has occasionally been referred to as "the web's hottest clip" On the Internet, both the terms "Buffalaxed" and "Benny lava" are now synonymous with mondegreens, "words or phrases misheard in ways that yield new meanings."

Examples in film

Other examples

  • A controversial example is found in the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, where Donald Duck in a scene chastises Daffy Duck, exclaiming "Doggone stubborn little..." Donald's quacks have frequently been misheard as "God damn stupid nigger", resulting in a hard-to-put-down urban legend.
  • The games Mad Gab and Babble-On feature mondegreens as puzzles for players to solve.

See also

References

  1. ^ Sylvia Wright (1954). "The Death of Lady Mondegreen". Harper's Magazine. 209 (1254): 48–51. Drawings by Bernarda Bryson. Reprinted in: Sylvia Wright (1957). Get Away From Me With Those Christmas Gifts. McGraw Hill. Contains the essays "The Death of Lady Mondegreen" and "The Quest of Lady Mondegreen."
  2. CNN.com: Dictionary adds new batch of words. July 7, 2008.
  3. NBC News: Merriam-Webster adds words that have taken root among Americans
  4. ^ Jon Carroll. "Mondegreens Ripped My Flesh". San Francisco Chronicle.
  5. Frances Crosby. ""Keep Thou My Way"". The Cyber Hymnal. Retrieved 2006-09-06.
  6. "Did Jimi Hendrix really say, "'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy?"". Retrieved 2007-12-18.
  7. "The Guardian," Letters April 26, 2007
  8. CCR/John Fogerty FAQ. This can be heard on his 1998 live album Premonition.
  9. "A.Word.A.Day". Wordsmith.org. March 28 2001. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  10. Friends, NBC TV, Episode 3.1, "The One With The Princess Leia Fantasy"
  11. "Goldblum, 'raines' only half on". Chicago Sun-Times. March 13 2007. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. A Wayne in a Manger by Gervaise Phinn
  13. Quote Unquote, BBC Radio 4, 2002
  14. "Song Lyrics: Twisted". JoniMitchell.com. Retrieved 2008-05-09.
  15. "My Loony Bun Is Fine, Benny Lava: The web's hottest clip", The Toronto Sun, April 28, 2008, p. 33.
  16. Monty Phan (2007-11-06). "Buffalax Mines Twisted Translations for YouTube Yuks". Wired News. Retrieved 2008-05-11. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  17. Spreekt Johan Cruijff Arabisch? on Nu.nl
  18. "Quacking Wise". Snopes.com. December 30 1998. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

Further reading

  • Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy — Gavin Edwards, 1995. ISBN 0-671-50128-3
  • When a Man Loves a Walnut — Gavin Edwards, 1997. ISBN 0-684-84567-9
  • He's Got the Whole World in His Pants — Gavin Edwards, 1996. ISBN 0-684-82509-0
  • Deck The Halls With Buddy Holly — Gavin Edwards, 1998. ISBN 0-060-95293-8
  • Chocolate Moose for Dinner — Fred Gwynne, 1988. ISBN 0-671-66741-6

External links

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