A set of One Big Happy strips in which little Ruthie confronts the language: a spectacular mondegreen, some other misunderstandings based on phonological similarity (with more familiar words replacing unusual ones), and some troubles with idiomatic usages.
The mondegreen:
(#1)
Other misunderstandings based on phonological similarity:
(#2)
(#3)
A simple idiom misfire, involving an idiomatic vs. a literal sense:
(#4)
And a syntactic ambiguity that turns on two senses of pretty, the literal adjective and the more idiomatic degree adverb:
(#5)
(Compare: You look rather dirty — degree Adv modifying dirty — and You look lovely dirty — Adj plus Adj dirty.)
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