Talk:Mondegreen

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[edit] 1

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

[edit] 2

The Sky Is Crying is by Elmore James, and Big Yello Taxi is by Joni Mitchell. I'll fix that now.

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

[edit] 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.) —JerryFriedman 21:33, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Dubious Aussie mishearing

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")—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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Wavy G (talk • contribs).

I dunno; why not put it in and see how it flies? --ILike2BeAnonymous 00:11, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Roger, Captain!

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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?

It's interesing. I think it should have a mention. Wavy G 11:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

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)

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)

[edit] 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. —JerryFriedman 21:37, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by ??? (talk • contribs).

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)

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—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)

[edit] 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 {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 {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)

[edit] 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.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.59.113.69 (talk • contribs).
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)

[edit] 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#Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, 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, 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)

[edit] Force Kin

Force Kin Troubleshooter 18:09, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Angry Young Men"

A pre-emptive defense:

  • 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.

--NapoliRoma 16:13, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] "Sixty-five roses"

This is (at least purported to be) a common mishearing of "cystic fibrosis" by children. Does it qualify as a mondegreen?

[edit] 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. —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. —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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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).

[edit] 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 {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 {L} 23:45, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "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.

[edit] 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 "Cather in the Rye." Would Holden's mistake in remembering "if a body catch a body" for a body see a body" count? Just curious.

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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
Artist Song Mondegreen Actual lyric
Iron Butterfly In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida "In the Garden of Eden…" "In-a-gadda-vida"

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:
Artist Song Mondegreen Actual lyric Comments
Iron Butterfly In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida "In the Garden of Eden…" "In-a-gadda-vida" This is an interesting example of a band creating a mondegreen of their own song. The line in the song, as originally conceived, 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.
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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Deletion protocol / Catcher in the Rye / British v. American puncuation

[edit] Deletion protocal

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.

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.

[edit] Catcher in the Rye

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

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.

[edit] British v. American puncuation

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.

We have sentenced 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)

[edit] "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)
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