Mondegreen
A mondegreen (/ˈmɒndɪˌɡriːn/) is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning.[1] Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; the listener, being unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes words that sound similar and make some kind of sense.[2][3] The American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, recalling a childhood memory of her mother reading the Scottish ballad "The Bonny Earl of Murray" (from Thomas Percy's 1765 book Reliques of Ancient English Poetry), and mishearing the words "laid him on the green" as "Lady Mondegreen".[4]
"Mondegreen" was included in the 2000 edition of the Random House Webster's College Dictionary, and in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2002. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary added the word in 2008.[5][6]
Psychology[edit]
People are more likely to notice what they expect rather than things that are not part of their everyday experiences; this is known as confirmation bias. A person may mistake an unfamiliar stimulus for a familiar and more plausible version. For example, to consider a well-known mondegreen in the song "Purple Haze", one may be more likely to hear Jimi Hendrix singing that he is about to kiss this guy than that he is about to kiss the sky.[7] Similarly, if a lyric uses words or phrases that the listener is unfamiliar with, or in an uncommon sentence structure, they may be misheard as using more familiar terms.
The creation of mondegreens may be driven in part by cognitive dissonance, as the listener finds it psychologically uncomfortable to listen to a song and not make out the words. 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".[a] This dissonance will be most acute when the lyrics are in a language in which the listener is fluent.[8]
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 (see mumpsimus). Pinker gives the example of a student "stubbornly" mishearing the chorus to "Venus" ("I'm your Venus") as "I'm your penis", and being surprised that the song was allowed on the radio.[9] The phenomenon may, in some cases, be triggered by people hearing "what they want to hear", as in the case of the song "Louie Louie": parents heard obscenities in the Kingsmen recording where none existed.[10]
James Gleick claims that the mondegreen is a distinctly modern phenomenon. Without the improved communication and language standardization brought about by radio, he believes there would have been no way to recognize and discuss this shared experience.[11] Just as mondegreens transform songs based on experience, a folk song learned by repetition often is transformed over time when sung by people in a region where some of the song's references have become obscure. A classic example is "The Golden Vanity",[12] which contains the line "As she sailed upon the lowland sea". British immigrants carried the song to Appalachia, where singers, not knowing what the term lowland sea refers to, transformed it over generations from "lowland" to "lonesome".[13][b]
Examples[edit]
In songs[edit]
The national anthem of the United States is highly susceptible to the creation of mondegreens, two in the first line. Francis Scott Key's "The Star-Spangled Banner" begins with the line "O say can you see, by the dawn's early light".[14] This has been misinterpreted (both accidentally and deliberately) as "José, can you see", another example of the Hobson-Jobson effect, countless times.[15][16] The second half of the line has been misheard as well, as "by the donzerly light",[17] or other variants. This has led to many people believing that "donzerly" is an actual word.[18]
Religious songs, learned by ear (and often by children), are another common source of mondegreens. The most-cited example is "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear"[4][19] (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").[20] Jon Carroll and many others quote it as "Gladly the cross I'd bear";[3] also, here, hearers are confused by the sentence with the unusual object-subject-verb (OSV) word order. The songs "I Was on a Boat That Day" by Old Dominion and "Hide Away Folk Family" by They Might Be Giants both reference this mondegreen.[21]
Mondegreens expanded as a phenomenon with radio, and, especially, the growth of rock and roll[22] (and even more so with rap[23]). Amongst the most-reported examples are:[24][3]
Non-English languages[edit]
Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian[edit]
Queen's song "Another One Bites the Dust" has a long-standing history as a mondegreen in Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, misheard as "Radovan baca daske" and "Радован баца даске", which means "Radovan throws planks".[74]
Dutch[edit]
In Dutch, mondegreens are popularly referred to as Mama appelsap ("Mommy applejuice"), from the Michael Jackson song Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' which features the lyrics Mama-se mama-sa ma-ma-coo-sa, and was once misheard as Mama say mama sa mam[a]appelsap. The Dutch radio station 3FM show Superrradio (originally Timur Open Radio), run by Timur Perlin and Ramon, featured an item in which listeners were encouraged to send in mondegreens under the name "Mama appelsap". The segment was popular for years.[75]
French[edit]
In French, the phenomenon is also known as hallucination auditive, especially when referring to pop songs.
The title of the film La Vie en Rose ("Life In Pink" literally; "Life Through Rose-Coloured Glasses" more broadly), depicting the life of Édith Piaf, can be mistaken for L'Avion Rose ("The Pink Airplane").[76][77]
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 d'Archimède ("the theorem of Archimedes") in his mathematics class.
A classic example in French is similar to the "Lady Mondegreen" anecdote: in his 1962 collection of children's quotes La Foire aux cancres, the humorist Jean-Charles[78] refers to a misunderstood lyric of "La Marseillaise" (the French national anthem): Entendez-vous ... mugir ces féroces soldats ("Do you hear those savage soldiers roar?") is misheard as ...Séféro, ce soldat ("that soldier Séféro").
German[edit]
Mondegreens are a well-known phenomenon in German, especially where non-German songs are concerned. They are sometimes called, after a well-known example, Agathe Bauer-songs ("I got the power", a song by Snap!, misinterpreted as a German female name).[79][80] Journalist Axel Hacke published a series of books about them, beginning with Der weiße Neger Wumbaba ("The White Negro Wumbaba", a mishearing of the line der weiße Nebel wunderbar from "Der Mond ist aufgegangen").[81]
In urban legend, children's paintings of nativity scenes, occasionally include next to the Child, Mary, Joseph, and so on, an additional, laughing creature known as the Owi. The reason is to be found in the line Gottes Sohn! O wie lacht / Lieb' aus Deinem göttlichen Mund ("God's Son! Oh, how does love laugh out of Thy divine mouth!") from the song "Silent Night". The subject is Lieb, a poetic contraction of die Liebe leaving off the final -e and the definite article, so that the phrase might be misunderstood as being about a person named Owi laughing "in a loveable manner".[82][83] Owi lacht has been used as the title of at least one book about Christmas and Christmas songs.[84]
Hebrew[edit]
Ghil'ad Zuckermann mentions the example mukhrakhím liyót saméakh (מוכרחים להיות שמח, which means "we must be happy", with a grammatical error) as a mondegreen[85] of the original úru 'akhím belév saméakh (עורו אחים בלב שמח, which means "wake up, brothers, with a happy heart").[85] Although this line is taken from the extremely well-known song "Háva Nagíla" ("Let's be happy"),[85] given the Hebrew high-register of úru (עורו "wake up!"),[85] Israelis often mishear it.
An Israeli site dedicated to Hebrew mondegreens has coined the term avatiach (אבטיח, Hebrew for "watermelon") for "mondegreen", named for a common mishearing of Shlomo Artzi's award-winning 1970 song "Ahavtia" ("I loved her", using a form uncommon in spoken Hebrew).[86]
Hungarian[edit]
One of the most well-known Hungarian mondegreens is connected to the 1984 song "Live Is Life" by the Austrian band Opus. The gibberish labadab dab dab phrase in the song was commonly misunderstood by Hungarians as levelet kaptam (Hungarian for "I have received mail"), which was later immortalized by the cult movie Moscow Square depicting the life of teenagers in the late 1980s.[87]
Polish[edit]
A paper in phonology cites memoirs of the poet Antoni Słonimski, who confessed that in the recited poem Konrad Wallenrod he used to hear zwierz Alpuhary ("a beast of Alpujarras") rather than z wież Alpuhary ("from the towers of Alpujarras").[88]
Russian[edit]
In 1875 Fyodor Dostoyevsky cited a line from Fyodor Glinka's song "Troika" (1825), колокольчик, дар Валдая ("the bell, gift of Valday"), stating that it is usually understood as колокольчик, дарвалдая ("the bell darvaldaying"—supposedly an onomatopoeia of ringing sounds).[89]
Spanish[edit]
The Mexican national anthem contains the verse Mas si osare un extraño enemigo ("If, however, a foreign enemy would dare") using mas and osare, archaic poetic forms. Thus, the verse has sometimes been misunderstood as Masiosare, un extraño enemigo ("Masiosare, a strange enemy") with Masiosare, an otherwise unused word, as the name of the enemy. "Masiosare" has been used in Mexico as a first name for real and fictional people and as a common name (masiosare or the homophone maciosare) for the anthem itself or for a threat against the country.[90]