childhood failures w/r/t interpreting language

i thought that when someone got a strike that the announcers said "swing in the mist", like that it didn't hit anything but the mist in the air

my BF thought that previews said "coming soon to a Theodore near you." this was when he was 3 or so, and his explanation for it is complicated. he thought that Theodore of the chipmunks owned a chain of movie theaters and that the previewed film was headed for one near him. flustered while explaining this, he said "basically, i just thought i could meet Theodore"

ben katz thought a lion was in charge of connecting calls and that "the lion" was busy

ha! theodore was my favorite chipmunk.

my youngest sister thought the expression, "he/she talks like she has marbles in her mouth" was "gerbils in her mouth."

i thought that female genitalia was actually called "naked." apparently this stems from an incident when i was running around nude as a kid of 4 or something, and my mom forbade me to go in the yard like that. "why?" "because people will see you're naked."

always heard "nip it in the bud" as "nip it in the butt"

i have a fuzzy memory of my mom having a long conversation with her best friend about some kind of depot and thinking the whole time that they were talking about a deep hole, and some embarrassing outcome of that

i thought if you went down a street that said 'no exit' it meant you would be trapped in there forever, so every time our father or mother drove us into a cul-de-sac i was petrified.

and if my parents said they were going out to a meeting i thought they were going somewhere to gorge on platters of lamp chops and sausages.

To Let = Toilet.

I liked Steven Pinker when the only thing I knew about him were the examples "Jose can you see by the donzerly light" and "the ants are my friends, they're blowing in the wind".

there's nothing worse than code do'ddert derv'bs

I remember an incident from my childhood (I think around age 5) where I overheard my dad saying something to my mom about going to the store to pick up a transformer. Imagine my disappointment when he came back home!

<3

talking to our Elliot when he was 5 or 6 one time I said something about his mum's handbag. "Oh, handbag!" he said. "Why, what did you think it was called?" I asked him. "I thought it was a ham-bag"

so in Chinese there are separate gender words for people and animals, when I was like 7 and visiting my grandparents in beijing my mom asked me what the difference between my grandma and grandpa was, I replied that one was a male(animal) and one was a female(animal), everybody found this hilarious, this was an oft-repeated story at social gatherings of my parents

it's not really a cute story unless you're chinese I guess

no, its cute!

a neighbor thought a wedgie was a "reggie," and wondered aloud who reggie was and why the act had been named for him

Once in primary school during a conversation my friend said "witches honor" and did the thing Samantha from Bewitched would do (the V/peace sign on either side of the nose). I thought she'd said "which is honor?" and I poked her right finger, thinking I had to choose one of the two.

I remember being terrified as a kid by public health warnings on the radio warning of AIDS saying that you should "always use a condom". Somehow I'd understood that a condom is a device, a bit like a fire alarm that you put in your house and it gets rid of AIDS germs. I was especially concerned that our house didn't have one and was very close to asking my Mum about whether we did or didn't use a condom.

I grew up being spoken to by my mother in French and by my Dad in English. When it came to going out in public I would therefore speak to women in French and men in English.

<3 petit chien latin

dog latins a girl(animal)?!

she didnt say petite!!

I ain't that fat either!

When I was small my dad called me a little stinker to which I replied, "I'm not a stinker! I'm a human bean!"

lol i also said human bean!

:D

related: I had been saying "for all intensive purposes" until I was like 26

Isn't there an Ally post somewhere about her thinking there was an animal called a pastrami?

Until I was a teenager, I thought there were two words, "choir" and "quire," which meant the same thing - and that it was a coincidence that I had never heard anyone say "choir" out loud and never seen "quire" in print.

that Ally post about pastrami is one of my all time favorite posts

how did you think "choir" was pronounced - chore?

Exactly. And when I finally realized I was wrong, I still thought this was probably a common misconception. It took me years to accept that I was the only one making this mistake.

oh yeah - I never pronounced 'colonel' and 'corps' correctly until like 15

xp - I think 'all intensive purposes' is probably common enough to enter the OED in like 5 years

I only found out about the pronunciation of 'corps' after I bought the game 'blast corps' for n64 and read about the pronunciation in some review

my friend called cannibal corpse "cannibal corps" for ages, this was when he was 27 though

i misread the word ABRUPT for years as ABURPT - like it meant something sudden and unexpected, like a burp

my friend spelled butt "buatt"even in middle school. i was always perplexed by that. not really relevant i guess.

related: I had been saying "for all intensive purposes" until I was like 26

― Lex Pretnd (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, 11 April 2011 15:35 (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

I still often have to check whether it's "all intents and purposes" or "all extents and purposes".

oh yeah - I never pronounced 'colonel' and 'corps' correctly until like 15

xp - I think 'all intensive purposes' is probably common enough to enter the OED in like 5 years

― i think drake distracts (dayo), Monday, 11 April 2011 15:43 (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Americans still can't say lieutenant right.

lev-tenant?

I thought "misled" was a separate word pronounced "my-zulled" until I was in my teens.

When I was a pretty young I had noticed that my mum seemed to buy packs of towels really regularly and I had no idea where they went, so I asked her. Don't recall what lie she told me.

when i was young i remember hearing about "lead poisoning", and i knew that graphite in pencils was referred to as "lead", so i developed an intense fear of pencils for awhile - if i accidentally touched pencil lead i would go to the bathroom and wash my hands in a panic

Haha I thought the same thing, except I thought you only got sick if you put the lead in your mouth.

along similar lines, i had no idea what "sniffing" meant when it came to substances, which meant:

a) on a drug survey i took in elementary school (probably DARE-related?), it asked if i ever sniffed glue - i've SMELLED glue, sure, so i put "yes"
b) when i learned what "sniffing" actually meant in that context i had the same panicked reaction to it as i did the pencil lead stuff, so i would hold my breath whenever i used wite-out because i was told sniffing it would kill you

otoh i got one of the rubbers on the end of a pencil stuck up my nose and the teachers couldn't get it out for like an hour. weird day.

lol you said rubber

Former ilx user pretzel walrus got major irl lols when in his presence I learned that the Huey Lewis lyric did not, in fact, go: "they say the heart of rock n' roll is New Beaton. In Cleveland."

Like, New Beaton was a suburb of Cleveland where rock was born, or something.

until i was ~14 i didn't realize that spoken "anxiety" and written "anxiety" were the same thing. the spelling was just wonky enough that i didn't make the connection between the two and just assumed that the written form was a word i never heard anyone pronounce.

also thought "various and sundry" was "various unsundry"

Until I was a teenager, I thought there were two words, "choir" and "quire," which meant the same thing - and that it was a coincidence that I had never heard anyone say "choir" out loud and never seen "quire" in print.

I was the same about segue and seg-way until LAST WEEK - it is kind of a revelation!

There should be a word for this thing.

malapropism?

Eggcorn

Whigfield - had a big cheesy hit circa 1994 with "Saturday Night". Didn't know it hadn't registered in the US as it was inescapable even in the UK.

I used to get into a hopeless pickle with WH Smith's. First of all I thought the shop that bore that name was actually pronounced something like Whismiths. Second, I knew people used to go to somewhere called WH Smith's, but this I would call LBW Smith's.

When finally I linked the shop I saw quite regularly with the place people mentioned more or less regularly when getting stationery it was an astonishing moment of revelation.

And I can still remember when I realised that so-popera's weren't so-called because they were so popular, but in fact because they were soap operas.

Don't really want to talk about halcyon/halycon.

my bf thought it was so-boperas, but he's from jersey

haha ledge google autocomplete suggests that "i can tina turner" is not-uncommon mistake!

thx for display name btw

The first time I ordered a 7Up I asked for a "Zup".

Guy in my sixth form media class got a big laugh for promouncing Wapping as "Whap-ing", but I think that's excusable if you're not from London.

Similarly I thought "Arkansas" was pronounced the way it's spelled and "Arkansaw" was another place.

When I was a kid, I thought the written word "epitome" (pronounced "EHP-ih-tome) and the spoken word "eepittomy" were synonyms.

i thought "awry" was pronounce AWE-ree, and when I found out it was pronounced the way it is it seemed really weird. AWE-ree sounds more like something has gone off kilter imo

my aunt, when she was a wee giddle, used to read a comic book called "The Sillent Three". When she found out it was actually "The Silent Three" she was really disappointed.

had the same deal with epitome

also had problems with "omniscient," pronounced it "om nee see ent" for a long time

Saw a character in a comic saying he had a new moustache, thought it was pronounced 'mouse-take' and referred to the coat he was wearing.

I used to get into a hopeless pickle with WH Smith's. First of all I thought the shop that bore that name was actually pronounced something like Whismiths. Second, I knew people used to go to somewhere called WH Smith's, but this I would call LBW Smith's.

My parents just call WH Smith's "Smith's", so I also thought there were two different shops.

epitome, misled, segue: me too. Also thought "mischievous" was "mischievious" for way too many years, even thinking that a teacher was wrong when she corrected me, and still have to stop and think about whether it is "anemone" or "anenome". Not that I talk about anemones very often.

Ditto "mischievious" and also I heard "alblum" for years and years and years, and I had to have a COLLEGE PROFESSOR correct me on "sentient" vs "sentinent."

liner notes, not linear notes.

LOY-ter-ring, not LOT-ter-ring (this is a weird one cause i can remember as a kid staring at a 'no loitering' sign and the 'o' next to the 'i' throwing me waay off. the idea was unfathomable.)

this turned into "words you used to pronounce incorrectly"

Similarly I thought "Arkansas" was pronounced the way it's spelled and "Arkansaw" was another place.

― Evil Eau (dog latin), Thursday, 14 April 2011 15:46 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol I only figured this out like a couple years ago.

i once ordered a pilsner urquell by pronoucing the second word as "urkle". i was in my 20s.

for a long time i thought the word "banal" rhymed with "anal." i thought it was kind of unfortunate that they rhymed but it was one of those things everyone was quietly polite about it. i don't think i ever said it aloud tho.

this was in high school

when my brother was little he thought that there was one word, "graple" that described both things that were purple and things that tasted like grape.

he also thought that the blue and red shield symbol for interstate highways was called a "norf" because that's either what people said or what it said on the sign. so he would call out "norf!!" whenever he saw one in the car, and my parents were mystified because he couldn't explain what he meant or what it was.

we used to say stuff was "bay-nal" all the time in secondary school. I Think we knew it was bah-nal but pffff....

Yesterday my co-worker was talking about the Annals of Internal Medicine and said "anals" and I could barely hide my smirk because I'm still 12 and then I felt bad.

Glo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo~
oo-oo-oo-oo-oo~
oo-oo-oo-oo-ooo-ria
And it's Chelsea's Day-o

shield symbol for interstate highways was called a "norf"

haha is this a mishearing of "north?" as in, "route 95 norf"? lolol

First time I went to Germany on a school holiday we laughed at literally every "Ausfahrt" sign on the autobahn from like Aachen to Munich.

Yeah well that is pretty funny. AUSFAHRT!

I remember seeing the phrase "cheap toupee" in i think a garfield comic or something. Toupee was written with an accent mark, so I figured the whole phrase was crazy and french and pronounced it "schopp too-pwah".

There used to be a not very funny Britishes humour magazine called Punch that I took to reading in our town library when i was 11-ish, mainly just for the cartoons. One of them mentioned "VD" one time so obv I asked my mom what that was.

at an amusement park (RIP r0cky po1nt) i mentioned to my dad that i wanted to go to the "horror house." i must have mispronounced it but i just couldn't understand why it was so funny to him that i'd want to go there. i think i was 9.

Spent a lot of time as a kid thinking "your highness" was spelled "your heiness" (like princess) and that it was clearly the highest honor -- above princess.

AUSFAHRT!

'Ich fahrt auf def Zug' cracks me up every time and is possibly the main reason for my poor secondary school German.

When I heard "Cult of Personality" by Living Colour, I thought that Joseph Stalin Ghandi was one person and referred to this person a number of times when talking to my friends about pacifism (5th/6th grade).

looooooool

When "Convoy" was a hit in the mid 70s I couldn't understand all the words and used to sing "We're gonna drive this fuckin' convoy/Cross the USA" until my Dad heard me. I didn't really get what was wrong tbh.

awesome

When I was a kid, I thought the green little dude who lived in the garbage can on Sesame St was called "Ask Her the Grouch". (think accent disparities for why)

Then again, our Prime Minister said the other week she would not be stooping to "hyperbowl".

Didn't know we had death rollerball sportz here.

I though segue was pronounced 'seeg' until only a couple of years ago gravel.

omg until... just now! :-/
Defence: English not first language. On the other hand, I'm 42.

Segue Segue Sputnik

There's a zillion common fancy words that I've only read, not heard. I'm worried that I'll have to say them one day and get laughed at.

apparently conrad had that problem, don't feel bad

He wasn't a native English speaker. I am one.

Had a girlfriend who thought tenterhooks was tender hooks well into her adult life. I quite like it.

Is there a technical term for this sort of thing? Specifically say where I knew there was a word halcyon - I heard people saying 'halcyon daze uh maybe days' but whenever I read it, I read halycon. I knew it meant the same thing. It occupied a similar space in my head, but if you'd asked me to read it out I'd have read halycon. So occupies same space of meaning in head, different pronunciation, yet absolutely no conflict - wd've sworn blind they were two different words, and wd've required a walkthrough to prove different.

When I found out about the heron nesting on tranquil seas my mind nearly fried.

heron? not sure where i got that from. And so it goes.

I thought that 'ceramic' was pronounced 'creme-ick', and that when people said the word 'ceramic' they were talking about something else.

I thought our national anthem began "Australian sunset ostriches, for we are young and free..."

1. Growing up in Delaware, USA we took roadtrips to historic Williamsburg, VA/Busch Gardens all the time and for some reason, my grandparents always wanted to drive past William & Mary College and I would always flip out because I wanted to go to Busch Gardens and ride the Loch Ness Monster, not go hang out with William and Mary, whoever the hell they were. I didn't figure out they were talking about the college until I was in my teens.

2. I believed "or derves" and "hors d'oeuvres" aka "whores de overs" were two entirely different things until I was in grocery shopping in college and saw a box of "or derves" labeled "hors d'oeuvres" and had an epiphany right there in the frozen food section.

3. Same with "bal-lay" and "ballet" (like pallet) although to my credit, I figured that one out in elementary school.

"Excuse me, can I have some whore's doovers?"

"Try Nevada."

I thought the written word "buffet" (noun) and the spoken word "bouffay" were completely different words, and I guess I had read the verb "buffet" or maybe the word "buffer" somewhere because I thought the "buffet car" on a train must be a special non-passenger section you had to put between passenger carriages to stop them grinding into each other.

(Guess who spent more of her childhood reading about trains in 1950s children's books than actually travelling on them?)