Getting all learned
Friday, March 28th, 2003 01:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanI wish I'd written this, but alas I did not. I found it in The Times a couple of years back and saved it to disk.
I'd forgotten all about it until I dug it up a few moments ago. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did (and do).
They ha' slain the Earl o' Moray and Lady Mondegreen ("laid him on the green"). For those of you who left the country to avoid the election, "Lady Mondegreen" has been making a glorious come-back in our correspondence columns. She has recycled old favourites: "Gladly, my cross-eyed bear" (Gladly my cross I bear). She has introduced us to new Mondegreens: "A haddock-stirring committee" (an ad hoc stirring committee).
We should analyse the old girl, as well as enjoying her charms. Journos are particularly prone to Mondegreens. With the clearest enunciation in the world (optimistic in a hack in a hurry) dictating a piece down the telephone renders him vulnerable to the word that sounds write but rights wrong. Were I not bound by a terrible oath never to mention my own best Mondegreen again, I would refer once more with feeling to the Dead Sea bushy-tailed arboreal rodents Scirius. But I dare not. It provoked our last great Mondegreen correspondence.
The technical name for a Mondegreen is a homophone. When two or more words different in origin and signification are pronounced alike, whether they are alike or not in their spelling, they are said to be homophonous. They are homophones of each other.
Mondegreens come in all shapes and sizes of mishearing similar words. "Solicitor and not a republic" - solicitor and notary public. But true homophones must be different words that have, or have acquired, an illogical fortuitous identity of sound. Purist grammarians rule that homophone should not be applied to words that were originally the same but have acquired different meanings, even though they may now be spelt differently. For instance "draft" and "draught" both mean something drawn (however different a thing). So they are not true homophones in the extreme acceptance of the word. Nor are the homonymous antonyms "fast" (moving rapidly) and "fast" (firmly in place). Both are probably descendants of an intensifier still functioning in German and its Yiddish cognate "fest".My Mandarin (and Martial Arts) are not good enough to decide whether "kungfu" is a true homonym. It translates both as "task" and as "leisure". French "voler" (fly) and "voler" (steal) are now thought of as different words. But they are not true homophones. Both derive from the Latin "volare". True homophones are beer/bier, there/their/they're, byre/buyer. Are "table" (furniture) and "table" (arrangement of data) two different words, or the same word with two meanings? Dictionaries usually go for the latter solution, on grounds of a shared etymology. On the other hand "pupil" (in school) and "pupil" (of the eye) are usually listed as different words - though they have the same historical origin. Words may be homophones in one variety of English but not another: "father"/"farther" and "for"/"four" are homophones in Received Pronunciation, but not in American or Scottish English. "wails"/"whales"/"Wales" are homophones for many, but not in Ireland or Scotland.
Grammarians hate both homophones and Mondegreens. They muddy the water. They break the rules. Robert Bridges, the poet laureate, wrote a powerful essay on English homophones. He compiled lists of 835 entries involving 1,775 words. And he argued the following propositions. Homophones are a nuisance. English is exceptionally burdened with them. They are self-destructive and tend to become obsolete. This loss threatens to impoverish the language. And the Oxford/Eton/Seowth English/Posh accent is a direct and chief cause of homophones by its smudging of unaccented vowels (eg "lesson" and "lessen"), the loss of trilled "r" (eg "source" and "sauce" - the origin of my Dead Sea tree-rats), and the failure to pronounce the "h" in "wh-" (eg "whether", "weather" and "wether").
Homophones upset grammarians. But Mondegreen Rules, OK? They are a source of gaiety in the English language. Falstaff, Alice, Dickens and Edward Lear would be lost without them. Thomas Hood made an oeuvre from them. "His death which happen'd in his berth,/ At forty-odd befell:/ They went and told the sexton, and/ The sexton toll'd the bell." Schoolboy riddles depend on them. "Waiter, waiter, what's this?" "It's bean soup."
"I can see that. But what is it now?" "What's black and white and red all over?" "A newspaper." Franglais homophones are a scholar's nursery rime: "Un petit d'un petit/ Sétonne aux Halles./ Un petit d'un petit/ Ah! degrés te fallent . . ."
Mondegreens are a source of ambiguity and poetry, as well as terrible jokes. They may distress grammarians and sub-editors. But, if they are good enough for Shakespeare and letters to the Ed, they are good enough for me.
I'd forgotten all about it until I dug it up a few moments ago. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did (and do).
They ha' slain the Earl o' Moray and Lady Mondegreen ("laid him on the green"). For those of you who left the country to avoid the election, "Lady Mondegreen" has been making a glorious come-back in our correspondence columns. She has recycled old favourites: "Gladly, my cross-eyed bear" (Gladly my cross I bear). She has introduced us to new Mondegreens: "A haddock-stirring committee" (an ad hoc stirring committee).
We should analyse the old girl, as well as enjoying her charms. Journos are particularly prone to Mondegreens. With the clearest enunciation in the world (optimistic in a hack in a hurry) dictating a piece down the telephone renders him vulnerable to the word that sounds write but rights wrong. Were I not bound by a terrible oath never to mention my own best Mondegreen again, I would refer once more with feeling to the Dead Sea bushy-tailed arboreal rodents Scirius. But I dare not. It provoked our last great Mondegreen correspondence.
The technical name for a Mondegreen is a homophone. When two or more words different in origin and signification are pronounced alike, whether they are alike or not in their spelling, they are said to be homophonous. They are homophones of each other.
Mondegreens come in all shapes and sizes of mishearing similar words. "Solicitor and not a republic" - solicitor and notary public. But true homophones must be different words that have, or have acquired, an illogical fortuitous identity of sound. Purist grammarians rule that homophone should not be applied to words that were originally the same but have acquired different meanings, even though they may now be spelt differently. For instance "draft" and "draught" both mean something drawn (however different a thing). So they are not true homophones in the extreme acceptance of the word. Nor are the homonymous antonyms "fast" (moving rapidly) and "fast" (firmly in place). Both are probably descendants of an intensifier still functioning in German and its Yiddish cognate "fest".My Mandarin (and Martial Arts) are not good enough to decide whether "kungfu" is a true homonym. It translates both as "task" and as "leisure". French "voler" (fly) and "voler" (steal) are now thought of as different words. But they are not true homophones. Both derive from the Latin "volare". True homophones are beer/bier, there/their/they're, byre/buyer. Are "table" (furniture) and "table" (arrangement of data) two different words, or the same word with two meanings? Dictionaries usually go for the latter solution, on grounds of a shared etymology. On the other hand "pupil" (in school) and "pupil" (of the eye) are usually listed as different words - though they have the same historical origin. Words may be homophones in one variety of English but not another: "father"/"farther" and "for"/"four" are homophones in Received Pronunciation, but not in American or Scottish English. "wails"/"whales"/"Wales" are homophones for many, but not in Ireland or Scotland.
Grammarians hate both homophones and Mondegreens. They muddy the water. They break the rules. Robert Bridges, the poet laureate, wrote a powerful essay on English homophones. He compiled lists of 835 entries involving 1,775 words. And he argued the following propositions. Homophones are a nuisance. English is exceptionally burdened with them. They are self-destructive and tend to become obsolete. This loss threatens to impoverish the language. And the Oxford/Eton/Seowth English/Posh accent is a direct and chief cause of homophones by its smudging of unaccented vowels (eg "lesson" and "lessen"), the loss of trilled "r" (eg "source" and "sauce" - the origin of my Dead Sea tree-rats), and the failure to pronounce the "h" in "wh-" (eg "whether", "weather" and "wether").
Homophones upset grammarians. But Mondegreen Rules, OK? They are a source of gaiety in the English language. Falstaff, Alice, Dickens and Edward Lear would be lost without them. Thomas Hood made an oeuvre from them. "His death which happen'd in his berth,/ At forty-odd befell:/ They went and told the sexton, and/ The sexton toll'd the bell." Schoolboy riddles depend on them. "Waiter, waiter, what's this?" "It's bean soup."
"I can see that. But what is it now?" "What's black and white and red all over?" "A newspaper." Franglais homophones are a scholar's nursery rime: "Un petit d'un petit/ Sétonne aux Halles./ Un petit d'un petit/ Ah! degrés te fallent . . ."
Mondegreens are a source of ambiguity and poetry, as well as terrible jokes. They may distress grammarians and sub-editors. But, if they are good enough for Shakespeare and letters to the Ed, they are good enough for me.
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Date: 2003-03-28 01:03 am (UTC)