Mondegreen

A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning. It most commonly is applied to a line in a poem or a lyric in a song. American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in her essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954. "Mondegreen" was included in the 2000 edition of the Random House Webster's College Dictionary. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary added the word in 2008. The phenomenon is not limited to English, with examples cited by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in the Hebrew song Háva Nagíla ("Let's Be Happy"), and in Bollywood movies.

A closely related category is soramimi—songs that produce unintended meanings when homophonically translated to another language.

The unintentionally incorrect use of similar-sounding words or phrases in speaking is a malapropism. If there is a connection in meaning, it can be called an eggcorn. If a person stubbornly sticks to a mispronunciation after being corrected, that can be described as mumpsimus.

Etymology

In the essay, Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the last line of the first stanza from the 17th-century ballad "The Bonny Earl O'Moray". 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 O' Moray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green". 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")

Psychology

Human beings interpret their environment partially based on experience, and this includes speech perception. People are more likely to notice what they expect than things not part of their everyday experiences, and may mistake an unfamiliar stimulus for a familiar and more plausible version. For example, in everyday speech, one would be more likely to hear somebody recalling how they kissed this guy than saying that they were about to kiss the sky. Similarly, if a lyric uses words that the listener is unfamiliar with, they may be misheard as using more familiar terms.

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. Pinker gives the example of a student "stubbornly" mishearing the chorus to I'm Your Venus as "I'm Your Penis," and being surprised that the song was allowed on the radio.

James Gleick claims that the mondegreen is a distinctly modern phenomenon. Although people have no doubt misconstrued song lyrics for as long as songs have been sung, without improved communication and the language standardization that accompanies it, he believes there would have been no way to recognize and discuss this shared experience. Since time immemorial, songs have been passed on by word of mouth. Just as mondegreens transform songs based on experience, a folk song repeated in a country where people are unfamiliar with some of the song's references is often transformed. A classic example is The Golden Vanity, which contains the line "As she sailed upon the lowland sea." The song was carried to Appalachia by immigrants from England, where singers, not knowing what the lowland sea refers to, transformed it over generations from "lowland" to "lonesome".

The creation of mondegreens may be driven in part by a phenomenon akin to cognitive dissonance, as the listener may find it psychologically uncomfortable to listen to a song and not be able to make out the words, particularly if the listener is fluent in the language of the lyrics. Steven Connor 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".

Examples

In songs

The top three 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 and Theodore E. Perkins, "Kept by Thy tender care, gladly the cross I'll bear") Carroll and many others quote it as "Gladly the cross I'd bear".
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 The Jimi Hendrix Experience: "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky").

Both Creedence's John Fogerty and Hendrix eventually acknowledged these mishearings by deliberately singing the "mondegreen" versions of their songs in concert.

The 1963 song "Louie Louie" by The Kingsmen was so hard to understand that many people suspected the song contained obscene lyrics. The FBI was asked to investigate whether or not those involved with the song violated laws against the interstate transportation of obscene material. The most notable misinterpretation of the lyrics presented by the parent who sent the complaint can be found in the third verse: "She had a rag on, she moved above. / It won't be long, she'll slip it off. / I held her in my arms and then, / and I told her I'd rather lay her again." No lyrics were ever officially published for the song and after two years of investigation the FBI concluded that the lyrics were unintelligible.

Rap and hip hop lyrics may be particularly susceptible to being misheard because they are often improvised and frequently lack an official, written version. This issue gained publicity in 2010 over multiple errors claimed in lyrics printed in the Anthology of Rap, printed by Yale University Press.

"Blinded by the Light," a cover of a Bruce Springsteen song by the Manfred Mann's Earth Band, contains what has been called "probably the most misheard lyric of all time". The phrase "revved up like a deuce" (altered from Springsteen's original "cut loose like a deuce", both lyrics referring the 1960s slang for a 1932 Ford coupé) is frequently misheard as "wrapped up like a douche". Springsteen himself has joked about the controversy, claiming that it was not until Manfred Mann rewrote the song to be about a "feminine hygiene product" that the song became popular.

A number of misheard lyrics have been recorded, turning a mondegreen into a real title. They include:

• The title of the animated Christmas show "Olive, the Other Reindeer", is a mondegreen on "all of the other reindeer", a line from the classic Christmas song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".
• The song "Sea Lion Woman", recorded in 1939 by Christine and Katherine Shipp, was performed by Nina Simone under the title "See Line Woman" and later by Feist as "Sealion". According to the liner notes from the compilation "A Treasury of Library of Congress Field Recordings," the actual title of this playground song might also be "See [the] Lyin' 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, which in no way hindered it from becoming a major hit in 1956.

Non-English language

The title of the film La Vie en rose depicting the life of Edith Piaf can be mistaken for 'L'Avion Rose' (The Pink Airplane).

Ghil'ad Zuckermann cites the Hebrew example mukhrakhím liyót saméakh (‘we must be happy’, with a grammar mistake) instead of (the high-register) úru akhím belév saméakh (‘wake up, brothers, with a happy heart’), from the well-known song Háva Nagíla (Let’s be Happy)." The 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 do love her", using a form uncommon in spoken Hebrew).

The title of the 1983 French novel Le Thé au harem d'Archi Ahmed ("Tea in the Harem of Archi Ahmed") by Mehdi Charef (and the 1985 movie of the same name) is based on the main character mishearing le théorème de Archimède ("the theorem of Archimedes") in his math class.

In literature

The title of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye comes from the main character, Holden Caulfield, mishearing a sung version of the Robert Burns poem Coming Through the Rye: the line "Gin a body meet a body / comin' through the rye" is understood as "Gin a body catch a body / comin' through the rye."

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 sci-fi story, "Come You Nigh: Kay Shuns" ("Com-mu-ni-ca-tions") by Lawrence A. Perkins in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine (April 1970) deals with securing radio communications by encoding them with mondegreens.

In television

• Mondegreens have been used as a story element in advertising campaigns, including:
  • A commercial 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 series of advertisements for Maxell audio cassette tapes, produced by Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury, shown in 1989 and 1990, featured misheard versions of "Israelites" (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 commercial for Coca-Cola with Lime, in which a technician in the Coca-Cola laboratory rushes to his boss, saying, "Put the lime in the Coke, you nut," to the tune of Harry Nilsson's Coconut.
• "Mondegreens" is the name of a segment on the Australian music quiz show Spicks and Specks (ABC TV).
• The Two Ronnies comedy skit "Four Candles" is entirely built around mondegreens, including a customer request for "fork handles" being misheard as "four candles".

Other examples

Amongst schoolchildren in the U.S., daily rote recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance has long provided opportunities for the genesis of mondegreens.

Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky in 1875 cited a line from Fyodor Glinka's song "Troika" (1825) колокольчик, дар Валдая (‘the bell, gift of Valday’) claiming that it is usually understood as колокольчик, дарвалдая (‘the bell darvaldaying’ - the onomatopoetic verb for ringing).

Reverse mondegreen

Some nonsensical lyrics can be interpreted homophonically as rational text. A prominent example is Mairzy Doats, a 1943 novelty song by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston. The lyrics are a mondegreen and it is up to the listener to figure out what they mean.

The refrain of the song repeats nonsensical sounding lines:

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey

A kiddley divey too, wooden shoe

The clue to the meaning 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."

The listener can figure out that the last line of the refrain is "A kid'll eat ivy, too; wouldn't you?", but this line is sung only as a mondegreen.

Other examples include:

• Iron Butterfly's 1968 hit "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", a reverse mondegreen of the phrase "In the Garden of Eden," which was going to be the song's title, according to liner notes. (An episode of The Simpsons called Bart Sells His Soul has Bart Simpson handing out the song's lyrics as a hymn titled In the Garden of Eden by I. Ron Butterfly.)
• Sly and the Family Stone's 1970 hit "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" is pronounced "Thank You For Lettin' Me Be Myself Again".
• A plot line in the 1945 comedy-mystery film Murder, He Says, which involves a nonsense ditty repeated by a character, which is a reverse mondegreen that contains a clue to finding some lost money.
• Anguish Languish (English language) by Howard L. Chace contains stories and poems that are deliberate mondegreens using real English words in a nonsensical order. It includes the widely-known story "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" (Little Red Riding Hood).

Deliberate mondegreen

Main article: Homophonic transformation

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. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart produced a similar effect in his canon "Difficile Lectu" (written ca. 1786-87), which, though ostensibly in Latin, is actually an opportunity for scatological humor in both German and Italian.^{[citation needed]}

A well-known trick is to ask someone to try to translate the supposedly Spanish "Si senor, dere dego, forte lorez inaro. Demaint lorez, dematrux, fullo gese enens andux", which when you read it phonetically is "Si senor, there they go, forty lorries in a row. Them ain't lorries, them are trucks, full o' geese n' 'ens and ducks".^{[citation needed]} Another version is that from faux-Latin: O civile si ego, fortibus es in ero, o nobile deus trux, votis inem Causan dux. "Oh see, Willy, see her go; forty busses in a row. Oh no, Billy, they are trucks. What is in 'em? Cows and ducks."^{[citation needed]}

Some performers and writers have used deliberate mondegreens to create double entendres. The lyric "if you see Kay" (F-U-C-K) has been employed many times, including by blues pianist Memphis Slim in 1963, R. Stevie Moore in 1977, April Wine on its 1982 album Power Play, the Poster Children via their 'Junior Citizen' in 1995, and Turbonegro in 2005, as well as a line from James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses. Britney Spears did the same thing with the song "If U Seek Amy", as did The Script in their 2008 song "If You See Kay" and Aerosmith in "Devil's Got a New Disguise." A similar effect was created in Hindi in the 2011 Bollywood movie Delhi Belly in the song "Bhaag D.K. Bose". While 'D.K. Bose' appears to be a person's name, it is sung repeatedly in the chorus to form the deliberate mondegreen 'bhosadi ke' (Hindi: भोसडी के), a Hindi expletive.

"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.

See also

• Ambiguity
• Amphibology
• Earworm
• Folk etymology
• Holorime
• Homophonic translation
• Mad Gab
• Mind rhyme
• Phono-semantic matching
• Relaxed pronunciation

References

Notes

Further reading

• Connor, Steven. Earslips: Of Mishearings and Mondegreens, 2009. [1]
• Edwards, Gavin. Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy, 1995. ISBN 0-671-50128-3
• Edwards, Gavin. When a Man Loves a Walnut, 1997. ISBN 0-684-84567-9
• Edwards, Gavin. He's Got the Whole World in His Pants, 1996. ISBN 0-684-82509-0
• Edwards, Gavin. Deck The Halls With Buddy Holly, 1998. ISBN 0-06-095293-8
• Gwynne, Fred. Chocolate Moose for Dinner, 1988. ISBN 0-671-66741-6
• Norman, Philip. Your walrus hurt the one you love: malapropisms, mispronunciations, and linguistic cock-ups, 1988. ISBN 978-0-333-47337-5

External links

• Snopes.com: "The Lady and the Mondegreen" (misheard Christmas songs).
• Pamela Licalzi O'Connell: "Sweet Slips Of the Ear: Mondegreens", New York Times, 9 April 1998.