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Mondegreen

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A mondegreen (also sometimes spelled "mondagreen") is the mishearing (usually accidental) of a phrase, such that it acquires a new meaning.

The word "mondegreen" is itself a mondegreen. The American writer Sylvia Wright coined it in an essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen", which was published in Harper's Magazine in Nov. 1954. She wrote

When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques. 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, [sic]
:And Lady Mondegreen.
The actual line is "And laid him on the green", from the anonymous 17th century ballad "The Bonnie Earl O' Murray". Wright gives other examples of what she says, "I shall hereafter call mondegreens," such as:

The columnist Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle has long been a popularizer of the term and a collector of mondegreens. He may have been the chief link between Wright's work and the general popularity of the notion today.

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

A popular joke has a child being asked what God's first name is, and he replies, "Andy." He gets this name from the hymn In The Garden (a.k.a. "I Come To The Garden Alone": "Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me, Andy tells me I am his own..." as opposed to, "And He walks with me..."

Another example was told to actor Art Houston by producer Todd Hallowell, when they were children. Todd had been told of an old hymn that mentions a large furry animal that suffers with strabismus, in the lyrics "Gladly, the cross-eyed Bear," based on the words, "Gladly, thy Cross I'd bear."

Billy Connolly described several mondegreens he sang in church as a child:

Quite a few mondegreens may be seen in captioned live television broadcasting of impromptu speeches, interviews, etc. (one local news report of a "grand parade" was captioned as a "Grandpa raid").

Some mondegreens arise from false friends. 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 (typically Japanese) is "misheard" into English, and illustrated. Engrish mondegreens can occur when English lyrics are reproduced by foreign language singers. Mondegreens are also an established YTMND fad, albeit called "interpretations" there.

This may happen in the opposite direction as well: i.e., English words of a song are misheard, intentionally or not, to mean something 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 babʲɛ lom), which roughly translates as "Throw a crowbar to the woman".

Mondegreen is also a segment on the popular Australian music quiz show Spicks and Specks (ABC TV).

The board game Mad Gab features 1200 mondegreens used as puzzles for players to solve.

The term was the inspiration for the name of the US-British a capella vocal group [Lady Mondegreen].

Contents

Examples

Comedian Bill Dana (as the Hispanic character Jose Jiminez) used the old joke of the entire stadium singing directly to him before a ballgame: "Jose, can you see?"

Publications

See also

External links

 

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