Archive for the ‘Mishearings’ Category
November 15, 2023
Well, what the tv commercial said was:
… our telehealth services
But what I heard was:
… our Nutellahealth services
A clear example of mishearing fostered by context, since I had recently ordered (and much enjoyed) Hella Nutella ice cream from the Scoop shop in Palo Alto. (I didn’t grow up with Nutella — it first appeared when I was in my 20s — and it’s not part of my life, but I’m quite fond of both hazelnuts and chocolate, so was pleased to find the two tastes together in ice cream.) So the name Nutella was racketing about somewhere in the attics of my mind; Nutella was, at the moment, especially salient to me.
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Posted in Language and food, Mishearings, My life | Leave a Comment »
August 19, 2023
I wrote on Facebook a little while ago:
Just heard on a tv public service announcement from Santa Clara County: … Watch for walkers and vipers. (Ah, that must have been: bikers. Fortunately, vipers are sparse in the county.)
Follow-up: there seem to be plenty of Dodge Vipers in the county, also Pit Viper Sunglasses. And we have the Silicon Valley Vipers quadball team. According to the US Quadball site: “quadball is a mixed gender contact sport with a unique mix of elements from rugby, dodgeball, and tag”. (Until 2022 it was known as quidditch. Yes, that quidditch. Players must have a broomstick between their legs at all times. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.)
Logo of the Silicon Valley Vipers quadball team
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Posted in Books, Errors, Language and animals, Language and sports, Logos, Mishearings | 2 Comments »
May 5, 2023
As a temporary diversion from some truly awful times in my life (which I will eventually post about), two reprised One Big Happy strips recently in my comics feed, in which Ruthie struggles to interpret language unfamiliar to her.
The strips.
(#1) The Iddle-Do Rule; which should lead us to reflect some on the distinction between circumstances in which “good enough for some purpose” — it’ll do — is the appropriate goal (the general case for most aspects of everyday social life) and the special cases in which a perfect performance is called for
(#2) Not Zarella cheese (with Not Zoball soup as a bonus); I note that Zarella is a fairly common Italian surname, which Ruthie (who is of Italian descent) might well be familiar with, so that a cheese named after a Zarella wouldn’t be at all surprising
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Posted in Dialects, Errors, Linguistics in the comics, Mishearings, Phonetics | Leave a Comment »
December 24, 2022
(#1) Xmas card from Tiny Bee Cards, offered on Amazon
Lizard warnings, lizzard warnings, lizards falling from the trees.
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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language and animals, Language and food, Mishearings, Portmanteaus, Puns, Signage | 2 Comments »
June 29, 2022
On Twitter yesterday, given a little push by my posting “Did that actually just happen?”, Merrill Markoe tweeted:
The Jan 6 hearings were once again amazing, stunning and magnificent. In a related story, because it is my responsibility and my job, I have recorded the valiant attempts made by the closed-captioning software to spell Pat Cipollone [AZ: the attorney who served as White House Counsel for [Helmet Grabpussy]]
MM supplied a series of screen captures with attempts at an orthographic rendering of
/ ˈpætˌsɪpǝˈloni /
of which her favorite (and mine) was Patsy Baloney:
(#1) Left, for the committee: US Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming; right: the witness Cassidy Hutchinson
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Posted in Errors, Mishearings, Movies and tv, Writers | 1 Comment »
July 31, 2020
Margalit Fox on Facebook on the 29th:
Time to get my hearing checked. This evening’s dialogue:
Husband: “Jacques Lacan is the thinker who merged post-Freudian psychoanalytic thought with Structuralism.”
Me: “Chaka Khan merged post-Freudian psychoanalytic thought with Structuralism?? …”
Jacques Lacan / Chaka Khan — some phonological similarity (same accentual pattern, shared medial /k/ and final /n/, initial /ǰ/ vs. /č/, differing only in voicing, vowels similar but not calculable here because of dialect differences in their quality), but then there’s /l/ vs. /k/), but largely the connection is through their being two relatively exotic proper names of cultural significance.
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Posted in Art, Language and food, Mishearings, Music, Philosophy, Psychology | 3 Comments »
February 20, 2020
What I heard from an MSNBC announcer, about Elizabeth Warren at the 2/19/20 Democratic candidates’ debate:
She came out swinging from the gecko.
I had this moment of visualizing Warren, her hands firmly grasping the gecko’s tail above her, swinging vigorously from side to side, like a fiercely determined pendulum.
Then of course I realized that what the announcer had said was
She came out swinging from the get-go.
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Posted in Errors, Language and animals, Mishearings, Music | Leave a Comment »
July 8, 2019
The One Big Happy cartoon I posted about this morning, in “Nudie Tales”, had Ruthie mishearing new details as nudie tales. That reminded Gadi Niram of this Mexican cartoon (from the webcomic La Viñeta ‘The Vignette‘), turning on a similar mishearing:
(#1) con D de Dinamarca ‘with the D /de/ of Dinamarca (Denmark), with D as in Denmark’ misheard as Conde de Dinamarca ‘Count of Denmark’ (Denmark does have a number of counts): “Oh, sorry, I didn’t recognize you, Tavid, Count of Denmark”
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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Mishearings, Spanish | Leave a Comment »
July 8, 2019
The One Big Happy from 6/11 (in my comics feed today), in which Ruthie mishears a stock expression from tv news reporting:
Said: new details. Heard: nudie tales.
The stock expression is new details (sometimes more details, occasionally just details), frequently at 11 (because 11 p.m. is the conventional time for the late evening news in the US), but other times are of course possible (e.g. at 6), as are continuations like soon, later, and coming.
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Posted in Eggcorns, Formulaic language, Linguistics in the comics, Mishearings, Phonetics, Stock expressions | Leave a Comment »
