There is a Page on this blog with an inventory of postings about mishearings, but there are ten examples in my files that I haven’t “read into the record” in postings. Now to make them publicly available.
Examples that are my own mishearings are marked with an asterisk.
*At Gordon Biersch in Palo Alto, 11/5/11: “The soup of the day is chicken noodle” misheard as “… shakin’ noodle”
George Thompson to ADS-L, 1/28/12: A profile in today’s (Saturday’s) Times on the singer Paul Plishka, who is retiring after a long career at the Metropolitan Opera:
It seems that someone who listened to the radio broadcasts of the Met thought that his parents had been such sports fans that they had named him “Baseball”. She was mishearing the way his name was called as the cast of characters was run down. The announcer would say some character would be sung by bass Paul Plishka. (NYT 1/28/12, p. A21)
On NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me on 7/4/15, Roy Blount Jr. heard “two lonely sea creatures” as “two lonely schoolteachers”
*KQED’s Forum on 7/8/15, with guest Diane Cook talking about her latest book Man v. Nature and the depiction of grief in one of the stories — which I heard as “Greece” or “grease” and continued to hear it that way long after it had become clear she was talking about loss and grief.
*NPR news, 7/23/15, apparently reported about something in the “lemon-based” Financial Times. Actually said: “London-based”.
* In a tv ad for Progressive Insurance, July 2015, Flo says, “Sprinkles are for winners”, which I heard (repeatedly) as “for women”.
*July 2015: a radio announcement encourages Palo Altans to use what I heard as their “green card” for food waste. Actually said: “green cart” (the one for lawn waste).
*8/3/15: commercial heard as “back-page relief hotline”. Actually said:“back-pain relief”.
*9/2/15: “Draft Kings” heard as “Rat Kings” (in a tv commercial).
*10/6/15: “Nobel Prize in physics”(in NPR news) heard as “Nobel Prize in civics”.
January 25, 2016 at 9:43 am |
I passed through the Houston airport twice in the past 10 days, and both times I misheard the announcement about the location of the “interfaith chapels” as referring to “interfaith channels”.