Talk:Mondegreen/Archive 1

How to define case
How would you define the following case produced my toddler daughter? Her first ever tale written (actually typed on my PC) all by herself started with "1-sap on a time 1 eeg say peeep-peep-pep".

The "1-sap on a time" part renders exactly what was intended, i.e., "Once upon a time". It is not a rebus, is it? The game play was not intentional. I'd hesitate to call a typo either, at least not a trivial illiterate one, but rather kind of "infinite-resource-and-sagacity" IMO (Of course, it was MY daughter :-).

mikkalai 21 Nov 2003 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikkalai (talk • contribs) 20:51, 21 November 2003 (UTC)

Song question
Isn't "The Sky is Crying" by Albert King? I know it was probably done before that, but I'm pretty sure that song isn't Stevie Ray Vaughan's. --Domukaz, 7/17/05 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.61.86.218 (talk • contribs) 16:11, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
 * The Sky Is Crying is by Elmore James, and Big Yello Taxi is by Joni Mitchell. I'll fix that now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.68.41.20 (talk • contribs) 00:43, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Stuff on Sylvia Wright and Jon Carroll
I restored some material that had been added by an anonymous user and reverted (and I edited it some), as it was highly relevant and mostly substantiated. If you're considering deleting it, please tell me why here or at my Talk page. Thanks. (Full disclosure: I "cyber-know" the person who added it.) &mdash;JerryFriedman 21:33, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup
I am afraid this page starts to accumulate "original research" that plague numerous word/slang/phrase lists in wikipedia. Time to apply the general wikipedia's "notability" criterion and disallow additions of non-published examples. Are you with me? mikka (t) 00:35, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I remember "The piece of cod which passeth all understanding" from the satirical Nigel Molesworth books, nothing about a pop song. I also can't help wondering if "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy" was really a mishearing. The page for Jimi Hendrix mentions a story he faked being gay to get out of military service. --GwydionM 17:30, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Bart's prank calls
Are Bart Simpson's prank phone calls mondegreens ? Jay 06:04, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'd say so, though in reverse of usual "mishearing". Maybe there should be a subsection for them here? --ILike2BeAnonymous 20:43, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I posted a question on the Talk:Bart Simpson page to find out if anyone there knows if this phenomenon (mondegreens deliberately forced on the listener, as it were) has its own name. Lawikitejana 17:30, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Dubious examples
From the list:
 * Australians all are ostriches, Four minus one is three (from the opening lines of the Australian national anthem - "Australians all let us rejoice, For we are young and free")

Whoever put this there: you can't be serious. Nobody, except in the deepest throes of being stoned or tripping, would make this mistake. "All let us rejoice"-->"all are ostriches"? "For we are young and free"-->"Four minus one is three"? I don't think so. I'm going to remove it, absent any protest. --ILike2BeAnonymous 20:41, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I've removed several examples from the list that really strained credulity. There are so many good examples available, just a Google search away, so why should we put up with dubious ones? Some of these were obviously just one person's take on what a certain song lyric could sound like; what examples like these should show are how such mishearings occur among many listeners (like the classic "There's a bathroom on the right")&mdash;and perhaps even be funny to boot.
 * The reason I took out the Monkees example is that there's no way that anyone in 1969 would have confused any lyrics with "Saddam Hussein", as that person was totally unknown to the public at the time. --ILike2BeAnonymous 23:16, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Why I reordered and added
A classic example was missing "You and me and Leslie", so I added it. When searching for the song title and such I found this link which indicates some sort of ordering, which matches some of the other articles I've read in the past. So, I put the top three at the top of the list. (I'm bothering to explain because I agree that random examples should not be added) Ingrid 03:35, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Blinded by the Light
I think Manfred Mann's "Blinded By the Light" should be readded to the list, mainly because its chorus is one of the most popularly misheard lyrics of any songs in recent history. As a matter of fact, I would say it deserves a small section to itself, based its many popular misinterpretations, not to mention the many references to it in pop culture: Conan O'Brien even did a "bit" where he goes to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and asks the clerk at the "Information Desk" what the correct lyrics are, and The Vacant Lot did an entire sketch around four guys sitting around arguing four different interpretations of the lyric. Also, I haven't checked, but I'm sure there are some websites out there about it too. What do you think? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wavy G (talk • contribs) 20:15, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I dunno; why not put it in and see how it flies? --ILike2BeAnonymous 00:11, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Roger, Captain! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wavy G (talk • contribs) 21:57, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Donzerly light
I changed "Jose can you see, by the dawn's early light?" to "Jose can you see, by the donzerly light?" as.. well.. I always heard "donderly light" when I was younger. When I searched for "donderly light" on Google, it recommended "donzerly light", so I thought I would use that instead. More hits on that phrase. --AshyRaccoon Talk Edits 08:14, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Isn't that what Ruthie from 7th Heaven thought it was in one of the earlier episodes? I'm pretty sure that she kept bugging Simon to teach her the words and then couldn't pronounce them right or something. FruitMart07 20:04, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

False mondegreens in captions?
The article says, '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").'

To my knowledge, all live captioning is done with the aid of computer software. The captionist types on a special keyboard optimised for typing phonics quickly, and the computer transliterates these into text in consultation with a spell checker. Often it is obvious that an absurd combination of words in live captioning has arisen from a simple 'typographical' error: the captionist chose slightly the wrong phonic(s) to represent words to the software, and/or the captionist accidentally selected the wrong option from a pick list of potential transliterations. Also, at times the speech does not resolve unambiguously to words until very late in a sentence or until even later, after appropriate context makes clear what the speaker said. The captionist cannot afford to get very far behind. People accustomed to following captions allow for these exigencies and simply read through them, "hearing" only the sounds and then "rehearing" them as the original words. One significant shortcoming responsible for many mistransliterations is insufficient seeding (or no seeding at all) of the spell checker with jargon or uncommon proper nouns (heh heh) reasonably expected to be present. The captionist may have no idea how to spell an odd term or name, or may have every idea but no time in which to do it. It should have been present in advance and come to the top of the pick list.

Do these scenarios qualify as mondegreens? Most of them would be corrected in very short order by the captionist if the performance were anything but live, so there is not so much a mishearing as a hasty misrepresentation. Further, in the future we can expect software to become more sophisticated at the task, to the eventuality of supplanting human operators. We can expect no such improvement in humans. Does this constitute a distinction?

Should the article be amended to explain the human/software/exigent interplay?

Of course, it is very annoying when it is simply clear that the wrong captionist was assigned to the job, and true mondegreens come straight from the captionist's mind at an alarming rate. Christian Campbell 03:49, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * It's interesing. I think it should have a mention. Wavy G 11:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I've now attempted an explanation of the reasons behind mondegreens in captioning, with an attempt to cover all the sources of error you mentioned (other than the fact that some captionists are just bad, which I think is implied in the explanation but needn't be said). See what you think. Lawikitejana 21:07, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

er... gaelic?
"A wean in a manger ("Away in a Manger" using the Scottish word for a baby)" has "scottish" wiki-linked to "Scottish Gaelic language". Isn't it more likely "wean" derives from Scots, and the word is cognate to the English verb "to wean"? --Krsont 00:43, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
 * According to the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, "wean" is indeed Scots and derives from "wee ane" (ane=one). I fixed it. &mdash;JerryFriedman 21:37, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Editors
Editors should 1) be native speakers of English 2) not remove examples on subjective grounds (including weakly objective grounds) 3) not make judgements on unheard examples 4) if in doubt, leave examples in. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pliny (talk • contribs) 23:38, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with (1), (2) is a toss-up; concerning (3) and (4), I disagree completely. The "examples" section becomes a dumping ground for every possible misunderstood or misheard lyric or line of any kind, regardless of how far-fetched, without constant judicious editing. That, after all, is the role of an editor, to decide what stays and what goes. If you don't believe me, just put this article on your watchlist and observe it over a week or two's time. ==02:56, 1 July 2006 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by ILike2BeAnonymous (talk • contribs) 02:56, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Look, I appreciate the effort, but could you explain the recent multiple removals? At first I even thought the page was vandalized. For example. why did you remove the "kinky turtle"? Google shows several references to it which may or may not be independent but are definitely not out of line. Please reconsider. Cema 04:01, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Did I remove that? I don't think so&mdash;at least I didn't intend to. It probably went with a reversion, since someone really fucked up the order of things here recently. I actually like that example. I'll put it back in. ==ILike2BeAnonymous 04:28, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Cema 12:42, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Trim
This article is chock-o-block with examples, is badly structured, and appears to have very little in the way of citations. I'll be giving it a big trim sometime soon. Just to make it clear that it wasn't an "accident" last time. - brenneman  color="black" title="Admin actions">{L} 05:08, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh...woah. Sorry, I just assumed such a massive clearing had to be a mistake. Hey, listen: How about giving the editors time to cite their examples (if possible) and restructure the awkward parts before deleting again. I'm sure they could find examples of the good ones easily enough. You could always tag it before wiping out possibly good information. Thanks, Wavy G 05:37, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Err, no, I'm sorry. No reason for the nasty-gram I delivered there. The problem with lists of examples in articles is that they tend to be added to indiscriminantly. I'll make a decent stab at re-structuring, but I'll move anything I take out here for consideration. I'll also cut back on number of bitch-flakes I have in the morning. - brenneman  color="black" title="Admin actions">{L} 06:59, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Not a problem. I understand the concern of articles with long lists of crufty examples, but I know this article is heavily monitored by its contributors, and original research examples are constantly being removed (I am not a main contributor, but it is on my watchlist, so I see this a lot). I'm sure many of these examples listed are legit and can be cited, or they would have been removed before. (And hey, it could be worse: someone could have pissed in your bitch-flakes) Wavy G 04:35, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Just one request when doing your trimming: please realize that the whole issue of "no original research" (I refuse to use those in-groupie Wiki-abbreviations) needs to be tempered here. As you point out, there are really no citations here, at least for examples. This is because, well, one can't very well find citations for most of these examples. It's pretty much a case of recognizing good and bogus examples on their face; for instance, the two universally-recognized English examples ("bathroom on the right" and "kiss this guy") are at the head of the list, where they should be.

I do sympathize with your desire to trim the crap out of the article, as I've spent a lot of time reverting sub-par and dubious examples myself. This article seems to attract more than its share of such flotsam and jetsam. I guess my parting suggestion is, just be judicious. +ILike2BeAnonymous 15:54, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to be really pedantic...
Another joke is about the 1894 hymn Keep Thou My Way with the lyrics "Gladly, the cross I'd bear," popularly misheard as "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear." – it's not really mishearing, is it, since the two phrases sound identical? Misunderstanding perhaps. 84.70.149.216 11:00, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, you’re quite right. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.59.113.69 (talk • contribs) 22:22, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Wait, not so fast, Mr. (or Ms.) Unsigned; I thought the same thing at first, but it actually is a mishearing. Think about it: what was intended was "I'd", when what was heard was "-eyed". The same sound, homophonically speaking, yes, but a mishearing nonetheless. +ILike2BeAnonymous 01:44, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Backing up the so-called "unsourced" examples...
For one, there is a book of misheard lyrics titled "Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy." And (I don't know how to cite something like this, but nonetheless) I know there is an old Kevin James comedy routine where he refernces the "Hold Me closer Tony Danza" and "The girl with colitis goes by." Just thought I'd throw those out there, for the whoever it was saying they were original research. Wavy G 02:52, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The issue is notability. Once again, I myself can invent much more. Wikipedia is not WP:NOT, ie, not a collection of quotations of jokes, puns, idiotisms, and other indiscriminate text. How do I know the 'green was not invented yesterday by smart anon? Original research, personal essay or wit, whatever. For the piurpose of encyclopedia 2-3 examples is enough. If you want more of them, please give the reason why they must be here. If you know a Kevin James comedy, you are welcome to provide a reference. mikka (t) 03:38-03:43, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, heh, sadly, I cannot. I'm just saying I have heard them "elsewhere." Love, Wavy G 04:29, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Force Kin
Force Kin T r o u b l e s h o o t e r  18:09, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

"Angry Young Men"
A pre-emptive defense: --NapoliRoma 16:13, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Notability: it's on one of the top pop albums of all time, Court and Spark.
 * Verifiability: both the original LH&R lyrics and the Joni Mitchell lyrics are published, plus there are some discussions of it on the web/Usenet.
 * I removed it; to me, mishearing "bell" as "men" is too big a stretch. Find a cite and list it here. And what is "LH&R"? By the way, doesn't matter if the album or song is notable (which Court & Spark is as you correctly point out): it's the mishearing that must be notable. +ILike2BeAnonymous 20:25, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I took the liberty of copying your reply to me on my "talk" page here:
 * Howdy -- the mondegreen you rv'ed as "dubious" is about as well-documented as you can get. The original lyric was on one of the seminal vocalese albums: "THE HOTTEST NEW GROUP IN JAZZ" by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, and as such the original recording and lyric transcriptions are published and available.
 * The Joni Mitchell version is on Court and Spark, one of the most popular albums of the 1970s, and once again her version of the lyric is readily available, and is published in songbooks as well as included with the album/CD.
 * In the original, Annie Ross sings "They all laughed at A. Graham Bell, they all laughed at Edison, and also at Einstein." Pretty clear pattern here.
 * Joni Mitchell mishears this, and in her cover sings "They all laugh at angry young men, they all laugh at Edison, and also at Einstein." Oops, mondegreen.
 * The original is sung at a very fast tempo, although quite clearly. The lyrics for this particular song are not on the album cover (only four of the ten songs on the albums have their lyrics printed on the jacket), so Mitchell would most likely have transcribed it herself -- no Google in 1974...
 * The Joni Mitchell version is a bit slower, and is very clear -- it's also printed as "angry young men" in the album/CD liner notes, which I just verified.
 * I believe Bette Midler got it right when she covered it, but I don't have a copy on hand to verify. I do have both the LH&R and JM recordings.
 * (Seeing that other mondegreen contributions have been -- in most cases rightfully -- challenged, I even covered a bit of this in advance on the talk page.)
 * Given all of the above, I don't think it's dubious at all. Could you please unrevert? Thanks in advance --NapoliRoma 20:40, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I didn't know about all this. Go ahead and add it in: this is actually unique among the examples here, in that it's a mishearing published as a cover of a song. Why don't you add in the background info (how Mitchell misheard and republished the misheard lyrics)? +ILike2BeAnonymous 20:50, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Footnote madness -- bug or PEBKAC?
I've tried to add a footnote about "there's a bathroom on the right." When I preview it, no problem, but when I actually save it, something gets screwed up. After my addition, the footnotes for the page should look something like
 * 1 ^ a b original Jon Carroll footnote
 * 2 ^ my new bathroom footnote
 * 3 ^ Joni Mitchell footnote

...and this is how it shows up in the preview. But once I save it, it shows up as
 * 1 ^ a b c d original Jon Carroll footnote
 * 2 ^ my new bathroom footnote
 * 3 ^ Joni Mitchell footnote
 * 4 ^ bathroom footnote again
 * 5 ^ Mitchell footnote again

I can think of another way to include this material as a workaround, but if it's a previously unknown bug I thought maybe someone should be informed (and how is that done?) so they can take a whack at fixing it. The other possibility, of course, is that I've screwed up my markup for the footnotes. I've unfortunately littered the article history with attempts to make the existing and new footnote markup match WP:FOOT, esp. section 1.2, to no avail. Anyone? --NapoliRoma 23:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The footnotes now seem to be displaying as expected, so if there was a bug in the Wikipedia code it's been fixed, or more recent edits to the article have made the bug go dormant again... --NapoliRoma 22:19, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

"Sixty-five roses"
This is (at least purported to be) a common mishearing of "cystic fibrosis" by children. Does it qualify as a mondegreen? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattiwos99 (talk • contribs) 18:15, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

italics and quotation marks
May I plead for consistently using either italics or quotation marks in song titles? The Manual of Style prefers quotation marks ["…when the title of an article requires quotation marks in the text (for example, the titles of songs, poems, etc.)…"], and outside Wikipedia, I strongly prefer them for songs. &mdash;JerryFriedman 21:43, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Song titles should be quoted, not italicized. If there is a lack of consistancy within the article, it is more than likely due to the multitude of users contributing to this article who don't know jack squat about grammar or punctuation. If you see something wrong, please feel free to correct it. Wavy G 21:52, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks, NSSTD. &mdash;JerryFriedman 22:44, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * For clarification for anyone unsure: Album titles are italicized, and song titles are in quotes. Example: The Dark Side of the Moon is an album whereas "Money" is a song.
 * Generally major works, such as books, magazines, album titles, movie titles, and television series are italicized, whereas minor works, such as individual articles, song titles, television episodes, etc. are in quotes. Example, Friends is a tv series, and "The One where Chandler Says Something Sarcastic and Monica Acts Neurotic and then Joey Eats Something" is an episode (just kidding, but you get the idea).
 * Hope this helps. Love, Wavy G 04:50, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Throw a crowbar to the woman
Let's talk about "Can't Buy Me Love" translating to "Throw a crowbar to the woman." As fantastic as I think that is, AltaVista's Babelfish program tells me that "кинь бабе лом" actually translates to "kin' to ram the scrap" and "throw a crowbar to the woman" is "Бросьте лом к женщине". Mind you, Babelfish isn't the world's best translator, but this seems disparate to a level of suspician. -Litefantastic 20:34, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I say we give it a week for someone with Russian expertise to confirm or not, after which we should just remove it if it remains unverified. +ILike2BeAnonymous 21:21, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
 * You have a 'pedian in mind? -Litefantastic 22:22, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Nope; I can read Cyrillic, but that's about it. Any way to send up a "distress signal" to get someone to look at this? +ILike2BeAnonymous 05:28, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
 * We go through the babel userboxes. -Litefantastic 00:23, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Andy Christ?
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" (also known as "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..."

So if God's begotten Son is Jesus Christ, does that make God the Andy Christ? --Damian Yerrick (☎) 03:23, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Yuk yuk —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 192.154.65.1 (talk) 10:13, 7 December 2006 (UTC).

wreck a nice beach
I commented out the external link in-line with this because it is not a reliable source. Do we have another citation for this? brenneman color="black" title="Admin actions">{L} 11:31, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I've reverted since there was a discussion thread here and it's not appropiate to debate using edit summaries. The source is a introductory aside to a paper, and does not itself provide any provenance. While the author may certainly be considered a reliable sorce in some settings, this does not by extension make everything that they say reliable. - brenneman  color="black" title="Admin actions">{L} 23:45, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

"No" for merge with Soramimi
"Soramimi" is not in many standard English dictionaries. Obscurity, non-reproducibility of Japanese orthography, and consistency (why only Japanese?) are arguments against merger. Thomasmeeks 12:45, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with Thomasmeeks, but for another reason. A Mondegreen is a result of an accidental misunderstanding, while a Soramimi is an intentional reworking of a line, to sound like the original. These are quite different. People who "coin" (for lack of a better term) a Mondegreen have no idea they have done so, while those who make a Soramimi do so quite intentionally. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.45.62.221 (talk • contribs) 20:27, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Original research
WP:OR forbids me from adding to "A wean in a manger"...."The little lord Jesus laid down his wee ted". Oh well. If only I was notable. Camillus (talk) 21:44, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Just something to add and I was not sure ho, but How about in literature including "Catcher in the Rye." Would Holden's mistake in remembering "if a body catch a body" for a body see a body" count? Just curious. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.88.201.100 (talk • contribs) 21:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Woolfardishworthy
In The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams, Woolfardishworthy is defined as: A mumbled, mispronounced or misheard word in a song, speech or play. Derived from the well-known mumbles passage in Hamlet This doesn't merit a page of its own, and I'm not sure it is even a word (but The Meaning of Liff is a dictionary of sorts, and the authors are well known), but is it a synonym or a superset of mondegreen, and is it appropriate to mention its existence at some point in this article? --JBel 03:02, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Don't think so; the article describes this work as "a 'dictionary of things that there aren't any words for yet'; all the words listed are place names, and describe common feelings and objects for which there is no current English word.". Interesting, though. +ILike2BeAnonymous 05:53, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

example rankings? mondegreen before real line why?
The examples section starts off by saying that it's the Top three mondegreens according to Jon Carroll, but after that ranking, they don't seem to be in any order at all, and I think they should be in some order. Obviously, we don't have any kind of mondegreen statistics, but we could maybe use statistics for the wikipedia articles--how many people go to the article for this song or for that TV show or this phrase to try and determine something.

I know it wouldn't be a great system, but we have a great list. I'm pretty sure more people know the Lord's Prayer than do Fawlty Towers and I'm pretty sure more people know the Star Spangled Banner than do Friends, and the list is in order to some extent, but not much.

Also, I'm really confused as to why most of the lines have the mondegreen first. It's a bit confusing for people who don't know the mondegreen. They read the mondegreen which doesn't make sense, then they read what it's supposed to be and then they have to go back and reread the mondegreen. Also, it makes it harder to find what you're looking for considering that we didn't do anything to like mondegreens (manger) like indent them to indicate that there was more than one mondegreen for that phrase.

If people come to the article looking for a specific mondegreen they can always use their browsers find tool, but this article should read well, so that someone who is just interested and wants to see what mondegreens there are for phrases they know can read the article easily. This list does NOT read easily and it takes the fun out of the mondegreens. TStein 00:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * First of all, regarding the "top three" business, that's just Jon Carroll's ranking of what, according to him, are the three most popular/commonly-known/notorious mondegreens; that doesn't mean there are, or even should be, rankings beyond those three.
 * As for the rest of it, relax: keep in mind that this section is supposed to be a short, concise collection of examples, not an exhaustive compendium of every mondegreen ever heard, ranked, indexed and so on. In fact, the great problem with this section is the constant weeding and getting rid of excessive examples that is necessary. Everyone wants to get their favorite mishearing in there. If the list is short and sweet, none of what you descibed is really a problem. +ILike2BeAnonymous 04:52, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Chart format
Last night, I rewrote most of the examples section into a table. That change was quickly reverted by ILike2BeAnonymous. I put in the chart because I think it's more reader-friendly. Which do you think is easier to read:

"In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by the 1960s acid-rock band Iron Butterfly is an interesting example of a band creating a mondegreen of their own song. The line in the song, as originally conceived, was "In the Garden of Eden...", but became distorted during recording sessions. The exact source of the distortion, either by singer Doug Ingle or drummer Ron Bushy, is unclear, and depends on when and by whom the story is told."

OR 71.96.141.116 19:57 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Easier to read, yes. However, changing from prose to chart format, you're obviously losing information, such as backstory, explanation, reason for differences, etc. Wavy G 20:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I see. What do you think about something like this:


 * 71.96.141.116 21:20 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * This seems like a solution in search of a problem to me. What exactly is gained by this change?
 * I don't think this material is appropriate to being put in a table. That's a good choice for certain types of technical information, especially where the data in rows or columns needs to be easily compared. That's not the case here. You're going to have a tough time convincing me that this is an improvement over a simple list. +ILike2BeAnonymous 00:47, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with ILike2BeAnonymous. The burden of proof here is on explaining why the list would be a better choice. -Phoenixrod 16:48, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
 * RE: What exactly is gained by this change? I think it would make the article more reader-friendly (see the top of this section).
 * RE: [The chart is] a good choice for certain types of technical information, especially where the data in rows or columns needs to be easily compared. That's not the case here. I got the idea for reworking the examples section from the list of backmasked messages, which is also in chart format. If the list of backmasked messages is in chart format, why should the examples of mondegreens not be?
 * 71.96.141.116 21:20 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Responses to your responses:
 * Regarding "reader-friendliness", the chart is definitely not "friendly" nor easier to read to this reader.
 * Regarding using charts for technical information: please explain to us what, exactly, the reader needs to compare in the rows or columns of this chart (which is one of the primary reasons for putting information in a chart in the first place). As far as I can tell, there's nothing here that needs comparison; each example stands by itself, and so is just as easy to read as a list item. +ILike2BeAnonymous 20:34, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Colt Deluxe
I once had a friend who had a trove of mondegreen-type stories. The only one I remember began like this: "When sip honor dime, dare wassail it'll curl whores gnome nose Colt Deluxe" (Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was known as Goldilocks). There must be a source of these somewhere on the internet, but I have no idea what search term to use - does anyone know what name is given to this type of story or where it could be found? Denni  talk 00:46, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Deletion protocol / Catcher in the Rye / British v. American puncuation
I just re-added three examples that were deleted from the mondegreen page. I put back Paul Simon, AC/DC and John Brown. They all had a chance to be reverted (though the later two came with editing so I can see the issue there), and they weren't. And, really, if you're going to delete content, especially content that other people have passed over deleting, then you have to let people know. You have to actually write an edit summary. Not does it take longer for people to notice content is missing, but it took me forever to find out where it was deleted and what had happened.
 * Deletion protocol

Obviously, not every example is important and we need people to delete the stuff that isn't. But be polite. Say why. Or at least leave an edit summary so it doesn't take me 20 minutes to find out when something was deleted.

'''If you haven't read Catcher in the Rye...SPOILERS! Skip this section unless you've read it or just don't care.'''
 * Catcher in the Rye

If we're going to have Catcher in the Rye as an example, I think a little more needs to be said then, "The novel title "Catcher in the Rye" is explained by the narrator as being a mondegreen."

Does in actually have a place on this page...maybe. Catcher in the Rye isn't really a mondegreen. The character didn't mishear a phrase--he misremembered it...which is really different.

The poem is "When a body meet a body, comin' thro' the rye,”, not, “catch a body” The Holden doesn't mishear it--he misremembers it and creates something around his misrememberance. Now I suppose it could go on this page--but we'd need something more--this isn't as straightforward as other examples and either way, all of the examples have more than what we have now for Catcher in the Rye. We at least have the mondegreen and the actual line for all of the examples and we don't have anything for this. At the moment, the article simply states that the narrator explains that it's a mondegreen. The article doesn't say that the title is a mondegreen or anything else. It's just odd.

Now, the title and Holden's mishearing is covered in Wikipedia's "Catcher in the Rye" article, so maybe we could link to that specific point or something, but I just think that we should take this out.
 * This has already been taken out, but just in case this comes up again, I went and read the section. The book never refers to the mistaken phrase as a mondegreen. However you want to classify it, Holden misremembering, the little boy misremembering and Holden going off of that--whatever, it's not a Mondegreen and the book doesn't mistakenly call it a Mondegreen, so it has no place here. TStein 09:14, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Is there any decision on which punctuation we should use. Because we have both types in this and many other articles. Obviously this is an issue that isn't just based on this article, but it would be nice if we could use one system for the whole thing.
 * British v. American puncuation

We have sentences that end ". and sentences that end ." and it's not an enormous deal, but could we just pick one? TStein 00:28, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

"Sam and Janet Evening"
I have come across this as a mondegreen in one of Gavin Edwards' misheard lyrics books, so I figured that this was a good example to put here. I know of a lot of interesting ones (including "The Reverend Blue Jeans" for Neil Diamond's song "Forever in Blue Jeans"), but I decided to pick one that made its way into another medium, so that's why I picked this one (the other medium being a commercial I heard on the radio). I am peeved that someone made an executive decision to remove this, as a result of this person's opinion that it is more of a joke than a misheard lyric. I beg to differ. I have all of the Gavin Edwards misheard lyrics books, and when I find some time, I will look this one up in the three non-Christmas books. Once I find it, I will repost it here with the citation from the book, thus affirming it as a misheard lyrics. In other words, once I have found it, I'll never let it go. RSLitman 21:08, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * As I explained on your discussion page, this is a malapropism (sort of, but close enough), not a mondegreen, mainly because it's an intentional mangling, not an accidental mishearing. As they say, close, but no cigar. +ILike2BeAnonymous 21:17, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Dew
What about the well known YTMND fad involving interpretations of misheard lyrics? 70.106.36.134 14:07, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The wiki article doesn't say anything about misheard lyrics. What are you referring to? TStein 10:08, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Commercial
In commercials they intentionally make the lyric to sound similar to the origin, but they relate to the product advertised. Is there a special term for this trick? It is not mondegreen, because it is not an error. mikka (t) 20:57, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Technically speaking, the example you just deleted is a mondegreen; it's an advertisement for a cell phone feature that lets you download song lyrics. I know what you're talking about and the only thing I can think of is maybe "pun." Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 21:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, in the context of this particular commercial, the characters are misinterpereting the lyric, so it is a mondegreen. It's not your typical "insert product name into a popular song" commercial gimmick. Wavy G 21:20, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry, these aren't mondegreens, which, as anyone who has read the Wikipedia article on this subject knows, are mishearings of a word or phrase. ("Mishearing" being by definition accidental, not intentional.) The "mishearings" you hear in commercials are cleverly thunk up by highly-paid monkeys otherwise known as writers.
 * The closest term for this would be eggcorn. +ILike2BeAnonymous 21:34, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Into the Valley
The Skids' Into the Valley has a number of misheard lyrics, the most common being "Barman, a soda!" instead of "Boy, man and soldier"

Why is this removed? This wasn't just in the Maxell commercial, I remember it (and others) from much before that. It is referenced in the website http://www.amiright.com/artists/skids.shtml with different lyrics to the commercial. In fact the commercial uses "Barman and Soda"

Maxell also used the Desmond Dekker Israelites example - why wasn't this removed as well? Tim Fellows 03:15, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Aserejé
I know it sounds unbelieavable but here are some lyrics to The Ketchup Song.


 * friday night it's party time
 * feeling ready looking fine,
 * viene diego rumbeando, [tr. comes Diego making his way]
 * with the magic in his eyes
 * checking every girl in sight,
 * grooving like he does the mambo
 * he's the man alli en la disco, [tr. ...here in the disco]
 * playing sexy felling hotter,
 * he's the king bailando et ritmo ragatanga, [tr. ...dancing et rhythm ragatanga(?)]
 * and the dj that he knows well,
 * on the spot always around twelve,
 * plays the mix that diego mezcla con la salsa, [tr. ...mixes with the salsa]
 * y la baila and he dances y la canta [tr. ...and he sings]
 * (Chorus)
 * aserejé ja de jé de jebe [I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie]
 * tu de jebere seibiunouva [to the hip hip hop a you don't stop]
 * mahavi an de bugui an de buididipi [the rock it to the (bang bang boogie
 * say up jumped the) boogie (to the rhythm) of the boogie, the beat]

Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
 * This is just nonsense having nothing to do with mondegreens. ''Bzzzzzzt!' +ILike2BeAnonymous 22:07, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
 * It's not nonsense. Look at the article on The Ketchup Song.  If you think that this doesn't qualify as an appropriate inclusion in the article then you ought to also think about removing Mairzy Doats as well. Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:13, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Even the article you pointed out say's it's nonsense:
 * Although technically meaningless and sometimes referred to as gibberish ...
 * I'll grant you it's something. What exactly, I don't know. You might want to check the related articles (eggcorn, etc.) to see if it fits there. And you're correct: Marizy Doats really doesn't belong here either, as it's not a mishearing, but an intentional confusion. +ILike2BeAnonymous 22:27, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think it matters that what is heard is meaningless gibberish. Hearing "laid him on the green" as "Lady Mondegreen" is equally meaningless since Mondegreen itself was a nonsense word.  And what about "Haffely, Gaffely, Gaffely, Gonward"?!  What I think is really at stake here is, as with what we discussed above with commercials.  Is a fictional mondegreen still a mondegreen? Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
 * You know, it's not so much a hard and fast rule as a matter of reasonableness: the question is, how far are you willing to stretch disbelief in admitting something as a mondegreen? The classic examples here (bathroom on the right, kiss this guy, etc.) are clearly mishearings. It's when we venture farther afield, into made-up nonsense syllables that someone supposes could be mishearings (Mairzy Doats being a prime example) that things get murkier. And of course, as is the custom with any Wikipedia article that has the merest list of examples of anything, such lists get quickly overloaded and clogged up with bad, sub-par or simply irrelevant examples.
 * The other thing arguing against your example, and others, is that one side of the lyrics&mdash;the sort of Spanglish mish-mash of syllables&mdash;is truly gibberish. A true mondegreen, on the other hand, makes sense on both sides, or at least the misheard lyrics are actual words, not just nonsense syllables. And now that I think of it, I think that ought to be introduced as one of the characteristics of a "true" mondegreen. +ILike2BeAnonymous 22:44, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Well that would be original research. "Haffaly Gaffaly goneward" is almost complete nonsense (although, granted, gone- and -ward could be combined to make a new word that has some semblance of meaning) and that was an example given by the woman who coined the term.  It's possible that a change in meaning is a change from something meaningful to something meaningless. Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 19:36, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, so we can make a section titled "fictional mondegreens" or "intentional mondegreens" or something like that and put these two (and the mairzy doats thing) in it:
 * There still may be an existing term that covers them; I just don't know what it might be. It's somewhere between an eggcorn and a malapropism, though neither fits precisely. Why don't you check those two out and see what you think? +ILike2BeAnonymous 00:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Well I know it's not eggcorn. Malapropism seems to fit better than mondegreen.  What makes you feel that it doesn't fit exactly with malapropism?  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]
 * For one thing, this aspect of malapropisms, from the article here:
 * 3. The word used has a recognized meaning in the speaker's or writer's language. Simply making up a word, or adding a redundant or ungrammatical prefix ("irregardless" instead of "regardless") or suffix ("subliminible" instead of "subliminal") to an existing word, does not qualify as a malapropism.
 * Since the verse you gave consists of nonsense syllables, that would seem to disqualify it as a malapropism. (Assuming, of course, that the article on malapropisms is correct.) So I don't know what it is. Maybe someone else has some ideas. +ILike2BeAnonymous 04:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

In an ad for V CAST featuring two young men singing Rock the Casbah by the Clash, they debate about whether the lyrics are "Lock the cash box" or "Stop the cat box."

The song "Aserejé" by Las Ketchup is partly about a man who has difficulty with the English language and has a mondegeen for "Rapper's Delight" (A song by Sugarhill Gang) when the DJ plays Rapper's Delight, he sings out:


 * "aserejé ja de jé de jebe
 * tu de jebere seibiunouva
 * mahavi an de bugui an de buididipi"

The actual lyrics that he's looking for are:


 * "I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie
 * to the hip hip hop, a you don't stop
 * the rock it to the (bang bang boogie
 * say up jumped the) boogie
 * (to the rhythm) of the boogie, the beat."


 * Thoughts? Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 23:56, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

an observation and two examples
From reading the article, most examples given are of misheard lyrics, rather than other mishearings. That must tell us something about the way some people sing, and how others listen. But the definition which opens the article seems to drafted so as to not limit the concept of mondegreens to lyrics.

The Australian National Anthem is a source of amusement for several reasons. A mondegreen that has recently received a lot of publicity in Australia, because it is discussed by the title-character in the popular movie "Kenny" (2006), comes from the opening line: "Australians all, let us rejoice, for we are young and free, ..." which the fictional character Kenny misheard as: "Australians all, let us ring Joyce, for she is young and free, ...". This is more credible than the "four minus one" example, already deleted.

Second example, non-lyrical, was used in a television advertisement for Telstra Australia, circa 1980. My father-in-law, who had been a soldier in WW2 told me that the words were used in training to emphasize the importance of clarity in communication.

The message given by an Army officer to a runner is: "Send reinforcements; we're going to advance." When the runner gets to headquarters, he repeats his message: "Send three-and-fourpence*; we're going to a dance." (*= three shillings and fourpence, about half of a day's pay for a soldier at the time). Pmthomas 12:20, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

end your life
what about black sabbaths "I tell you all to enjoy life", in the song 'paranoid'?

every time i listen to it i hear "I tell you all to end your life". which would probably be the biggest heavy metal steriotype· Lygophile   has   spoken  13:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm fairly (not 100%) sure that this mondegreen was reproduced when Megadeth covered the song for the Nativity In Black tribute. Well, it sounds more like Dave is singing 'end your life' than 'enjoy life' to me. Megadeth also had another infamous bit of lyrical license on their cover of Anarchy in the U.K., though Dave says he 'made up the words he couldn't figure out'. Not sure how that fits in here. PolarisSLBM 14:31, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Wishmaster
There have been several unofficial 'music videos' for the song Wishmaster by the band Nightwish, showing images of words which are not the lyrics to said song, but could be misheard to be, in several places, such as Google video or Youtube. Do these videos deserve a mention? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 160.36.119.134 (talk) 04:06, 6 March 2007 (UTC).
 * No, no, no, no, no! The article is already continually getting swamped with bad examples and contrived mondegreens. If you run across a bona fide mishearing, something of the caliber of "bathroom on the right", then add it. +ILike2BeAnonymous 06:05, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Arby's roast beef?
What about the fast food chain Arby's. Is 'Arby' considered a mondegreen of 'R.B.', the initials of Roast Beef? --Mainstreetmark 16:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Think for a second about your question: it's not a mishearing of a word or phrase, now, is it? It's just a spelling out of letters, so no, not a mondegreen. (Like the use of the term "wye" for something shaped like the letter "Y".) +ILike2BeAnonymous 17:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * "Mairzy doats" (the literal song lyric) is an intentional mondegreen of "Mares Eat Oats" just as "Arby" is one for "R. B." I'm prepared to accept that I'm wrong - it's just a thought.  --Mainstreetmark 18:33, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Mondegreens in fiction
Perhaps the should be a section that lists Mondegreens that have been used on TV, films etc. Do you under stand what I MJN SEIFER 19:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC) mean MJN SEIFER 19:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The Bible Mondegreen
I am the contributor who added the apparent Bible mondegreen. I don't mind the additional information that has been added, but the text that was omitted carried my point: That the onlookers mistook Jesus' words for calling to Elijah. without that part the very point I was trying to make, is lost. :( Dougie monty 07:26, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I added a Fact to the sentence When Jesus said "Eli" or "Eloi," both meaning "my God" as in Psalms, the onlookers misunderstood this to mean "Elijah." I see no reason why onlookers would hear either "Eli" or "Eloi" and think, "Jesus must mean 'Eliahu'." The name "Eliahu" is too different from "Eli" or "Eloi" to make this plausible. So, any citation offered had better be pretty credible. Anomalocaris (talk) 17:48, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

The citation I mustered is Verses 35 and 36 in Mark Chapter 15. Remember--we don't know that the onlookers who said this even spoke Hebrew or Aramaic--Pilate's sign was after all in three languages. And that last vowel sound in "Eliahu" was often added by the Jewish scribes in the Old Testament to hide the allusion to the divine name. Dougie monty (talk) 06:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Dougie: I agree with you that Mark 15:34-35 supports the claim that (according to the Gospel of Mark) bystanders heard Jesus say something that began "Eloi" and misheard that as referring to Elijah. However, this does not qualify as a Mondegreen. A Mondegreen is a series of words in the mind of the listener that replaces a series of spoken words. It would be a Mondegreen if the Gospel of Mark 15 went as follows:


 * 34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Lama Sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
 * 35 When some of those standing near heard this, they said, "Listen, he's said "Eloila Masabach Thani . . ."


 * (These last three words are just made up and not intended to be actual Hebrew or Aramaic.) If the Gospel of Mark went this way, it would be a Mondegreen. Instead, the Gospel of Mark simply says that the bystanders didn't understand Jesus' utterance at all, and thought they heard Jesus utter the name of Elijah.


 * Therefore, I am removing this example from the page.


 * Finally, I strongly disagree with you that the last vowel, or last syllable, of Hebrew Bible names ending in "hu" was added by scribes to hide the allusion to the divine name. In Hebrew names ending "hu" the syllable "hu" is the Hebrew word meaning "he" and is the subject of a short sentence. For example, Eliahu = Eli + a + hu = my god + connective vowel + he = "he is my god." Anomalocaris (talk) 18:53, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I cannot vouch for this, but I have heard of a small child supposing that God's name was Harold as a result of mishearing "...hallowed be thy name..." in the Lord's prayer as "...Harold be thy name...". P.M.Lawrence —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.220.83.66 (talk) 13:42, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Fat Man, Discuss
Fat Man, do not remove sourced items. And justify your proposed wholesale changes here before you go ahead. You must discuss with other editors. 62.64.213.138 (talk) 16:31, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Which sourced items did I remove? And more importantly, why did you restore all the unsourced items?--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 06:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I see you're still reverting my changes. I've asked for outside input at WP:3O and WP:RSN.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 17:20, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Third Party Opinion -- Initiated

Truth be told, "Friends, the TV show" is a poor citation. It's not a poor references, but without an episode name, it's a poor ciation of what may perhaps be a good reference. With all that is in Wikiedia without any reference at all, it's surprising that there are some who will remove uncontroversial things (without reference, or proper reference) without initially marking it as verification needed or something along those lines. Let's not become too pedantic over this.  DRosenbach  ( Talk 04:25, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, reference to a tv episode is a source. The information doesn't have to have been sucked into a book first. That said the citation should be more specific. And editors should be given the chance to improve the citation first. 62.64.208.209 (talk) 12:18, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Some of the references are still lousy; but you're right that this is relatively easy to fix, if someone spends some time. Perhaps the greater problem is that the pop culture reference currently overwhelms the article, a problem that only gets worse as the.  For now, I'm going to weed out a few examples with egregiously lacking or misleading references, but utlimately I'd like to drastically prune or eliminate the "Examples" section altogether (I won't do this myself, until we generate consensus on the matter). Any especially complleing examples can be incorporated into the main body of the text, IMO.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 01:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

In Music

 * * An popular parody of a Polish black metal band Behemoth can be found on YouTube[2]. It sports mixed Polish-English mishearings, accompanied by a subtitled edit of the original music video that perfectly parodies the dark and heavy atmosphere of the original song.

This reads as an advertisement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.80.43.25 (talk) 00:01, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

What about TLC's song Waterfalls? "Don't go chasing waterfalls"/"Don't go Jason Waterfalls". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.62.8.173 (talk) 22:07, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

How about Queen's Bohemium Rapsody? "The devil for a sideboard me". --Nibi (talk) 23:29, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

New word coined in Berlitz reference!
Under the heading "External links," it says that Richie Valens' song "La Bamba" was "flasly translated to English." I have read four Berlitz self-teacher books and never found the word "flasly." It isn't in my Webster's Dictionary either. What does it mean? And it's certainly no mondegreen... Dougie monty (talk) 18:00, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I wonder if it's a combo typo-misspelling of "falsely"?Lawikitejana (talk) 00:46, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Close Encounters of the third kind
Some nice guy removed my entry, which was about a mondegreen in this movie. Since this is a page about mondegreens, I can't understand why it was removed. I know that everybody can edit Wikipedia, but I think it's good education to contact the author first.--Gspinoza (talk) 13:45, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, the answer to that is right there on the edit page itself, the warning "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed for profit by others, do not submit it.". So no, most edits don't require the editor to seek permission to change existing text. (In the case of a substantial change involving a significant amount of text, or one that significantly changes the meaning of an article, then yes, it's a good thing to hash things out on a discussion page first.) Basically, the item you added was not a good example, compared to most of the ones in the article. And yes, there is still a good deal of flotsam and jetsam in the article that needs to be weeded out, so don't feel as if you're being singled out here. +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 19:15, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe it was not a good example for you. But you are not the whole world. --Gspinoza (talk) 15:33, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I think that if you want to wait for others to comment, you'll find that most other editors here would agree with me. +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 19:09, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


 * i concur.99.153.29.112 (talk) 13:38, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

True (but unverifiable)
A fan of Siouxsie and the Banshees, upon first hearing the latest single, was convinced that Siouxsie was extolling the listener to "EeAAAaaaaaaaat cat poo"! (Peek-a-Boo (song)). Sadly, even without WP:EL spoiling things, the website got taken down a few years ago... LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:27, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced Original Research about fried chicken
My objection to your repeated attempts to include fried chicken information are based on this portion of the Wikipedia policy of No Original Research. I will give you another day to come up with a source that makes the analysis before I revert it, but I am going to tag it now. TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 18:37, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

what the... how there isnt reference to catcher in the rye?
yow know. i wanna be the catcher. when it is catch her. its quite important mondegreen. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.139.149.157 (talk) 20:39, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, it is neither. The original poem says, "If a body meet a body," whereas Holden has misremembered it as "if a body catch a body" and has therefore fantasized about becoming a "catcher in the rye." See this page from SparkNotes for more detail.Lawikitejana (talk) 00:58, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed merger with Soramimi
The suggested merger is a very bad idea as mondegreens are an intra-lingual phenomenon and soramimi an inter-lingual one.Rykalski (talk) 11:36, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

It seems there's not much support for the merge? At least none since 2006... I propose that the merge proposal is removed. --87.196.179.99 (talk) 21:44, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree. If someone wants to add the merge tag again, fine. But since there's no seeming support for the merge, I'll remove the tag. -Phoenixrod (talk) 21:52, 20 July 2008 (UTC)


 * For reference, here is some previous discussion opposing the merge: Talk:Mondegreen/Archive_1. -Phoenixrod (talk) 21:55, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Ken Lee
Just a suggestion. Given that it's become something of an internet phenomenon, the cover of Mariah Carey's "Without You" by a Bulgarian pop idol entrant who mistakes the words "Can't Live" for "Ken Lee" might be worth including. The entire rendition is full of mis-interpretations. There's an article on it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Lee_(song). I know there are already several pop culture references in this article. What do you think? 82.40.236.77 (talk) 11:50, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Definition: must it be from a song?
The definition currently given says a mondegreen must come from "a line or lyric in a song". Yet a number of the examples given are not of that type. The eponymous example comes from a "ballad", to be sure, but it was one which Sylvia Wright's mother "read" to her, and which she counted as one of her favorite "poems". The other two examples (from Psalm 23 and from "The Charge of the Light Brigade") are not from songs. Other examples cited in the article are not even from poems: e.g. "closed-captioned live television broadcasting of impromptu speeches, interviews, etc." The well-known riffs on the US Pledge of Allegiance ("I led the pigeons to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for Richard Stands … One naked individual, with liberty and justice for all"), if not invented to be funny, are mondegrenous in origin.

Isn't the central characteristic the mishearing involved? The original is pronounced perfectly well (it is not a production error) but it is misheard and/or misanalyzed by the hearer. Of course such mishearings, especially when they become standard, are most obvious and striking when the original is also well-known and standard. Both poetry and song lyrics are among the kinds of speech that becomes standard (in their original and potentially in their mondegreened forms) for certain sub-populations, they both often have unusual words and diction, and for songs in particular it is often difficult to hear the lyrics clearly. Thus they would naturally be especially susceptible to mondegrenous reinterpretation. But mondegreens on other well-known phrases, e.g. from Shakespearian soliloquys, from Lincoln's Gettysburg address or from non-poetic portions of the Bible, have often been reported and seem to me at least to be perfectly reasonable exemplars of the phenomenon. And I see no reason to exclude from the category the more transient cases like the live-broadcasting captions (at least when they are due to human interpretive error rather than machine-induced error.)

So I would propose for the definition something more like: A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song, due to near homophony.

Does something like that seem right?

--Lavintzin (talk) 23:04, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
 * If you can find a reliable source that has produced a similar definition. Otherwise we are in the land of original research. -- The Red Pen of Doom  00:00, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Lavintzin, the current lead line dates from an edit on 9 April 2008 that replaced the previous version. That was done with no discussion, and there was no reaction on the talk page until now.  Prior to 9 April, the definition given was remarkably close to yours, except that yours is broader.  The pre-9 April version said: "A mondegreen is the mishearing (usually unintentional) of a phrase as a homophone or near-homophone in such a way that it acquires a new meaning."  And that, or something close to it, goes back to the very beginnings of the article.  It never was sourced.  Finding a source, as RedPen points out, is desirable, but the present (music-oriented) version is no more sourced than the original!  (It is also overly curt and undetailed.)  There is definitely room for improvement.  It seems to me that, absent a reliable source, your proposed definition would serve far better than the present version. Hertz1888 (talk) 01:27, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

The line between "no original research" and "don't leave misleading statements in the article" is a bit of a slippery one. I won't be bold and change it at this point, but I'd be happy if someone else would. --Lavintzin (talk) 15:44, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Later: http://www.word-detective.com/back-e2.html refers to 'what we word mechanics call a "mondegreen," or a mishearing of a popular phrase or song lyric', and "Mondegreens are humorous mishearings of popular phrases and song lyrics". The example that brings up the discussion is from neither a poem nor a song: the mis-analysis of "for all intents and purposes" as "for all intensive purposes." In the Word Detective's opinion, that is a clear case of a mondegreen. Does that count as a reliable source? --Lavintzin (talk) 16:04, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks like a decent citation, and is infinitely better than anything (namely, zilch) that was there before, in the course of nearly seven years. If it is up to me, I'd say to go for it. Cheers, Hertz1888 (talk) 17:26, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I changed it. I get lost with the conventions for referencing: could somebody add the appropriately-formatted reference to the "Word Detective" and or other online pages. (There are several out there that basically say the same thing.)--Lavintzin (talk) 23:04, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Song lyrics
I've removed the following text since it just seems to be people adding in whatever they can think of. Unless there's a source where a lyric has popularly been thought of as someting else, I don't think any other examples should be added. A few more recent examples in popular music are -
 * The England Dan and John Ford Coley song "I'd Really Love To See You Tonight" has the line "I'm not talking 'bout moving in" which is often sung as "I'm not talking 'bout the linen".


 * Peter Gabriel, "Games Without Frontiers" "She's so funky, yeah" ("Jeux sans frontières")


 * David Bowie, "Space Oddity" "And the papers want to know who shot you where" ("And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear")


 * Paul Young "Everytime You Go Away". "Everytime you go away, You leave a piece of meat with you".....


 * Chumbawamba "Tubthumping". "I've got no towel but I've got underpants, I'm never gonna get a towel" ("I get knocked down but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down")


 * The Dragon song "Baby don't speak no evil" is often sung as "Blame it on Squeak McEvil"

Many of these just seem to be made up for comic effect, the Paul Young and Chumbawamba examples aren't even using similar sounding words in some places.--Tuzapicabit (talk) 12:42, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for pruning these from the list, which has been growing overly long. I think your reasons are sound.  I had noticed that the latest items (the ones you removed) were far-fetched and lack the charm of the more classic (and mostly cited) examples.  It's a section of examples, after all, not an exhaustive or comprehensive list.  How many "examples" are needed?  The section is long enough, in my opinion, but is sure to grow again, and will need periodic re-pruning. Hertz1888 (talk) 13:11, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that, I don't generally like removing people's work, but I also equally hate overlong lists. --Tuzapicabit (talk) 19:40, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * An example which I would consider extremely common is that of Blinded by the Light by Bruce Springsteen, and made popular by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. It is the remake of the song which is common, and I remember reading somewhere that Springsteen even said that he thought part of what made it famous was the mis-interpretation of the lyrics.  While I agree that the examples list is plenty long enough, this example is a more common occurence to give the reader an understanding of the word.  I've both overheard and been involved in many discussions about this song, and have even heard lengthy discussions complete with listener call-ins about it on the radio.


 * I'll leave it up to the experts as to whether or not it has merit—or enough merit to replace an existing entry anyway. Many citations to the song can be found in various places on the web.  I looked around and didn't see any mention of this song on either the article page or the discussion page, my appologies if it's already been ignored intentionally.--65.208.138.225 (talk) 23:11, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I was wondering about the one that goes: "Play that funky music, white boy." That is one that commonly is thought to be saying profanity.  "Play that f**king music..." --74.124.187.76 (talk) 05:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)