I’m a working man…
I grew up in a family that both encouraged and enforced having eclectic tastes in music. As a result i have became a big fan of a lot of the lesser well known but still very talented bands that my parents listened to. one of my favorite songs is a Band song named “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” in this song there is a luric “Like my father before my im ‘a work the land.” since i was a young child ive always believed and sang it “Like my father before me Im ‘a working man.” recently my brother, who has far more knowlege on the subject pointed out to me that i was mistaken in my interpretation of the lyrics.
this misinterpretation works on one obvious level. the mistake must come from the phonological similarity in the two phrases. working man and work the land have very similar phonological characteristics. both have a /ae/ sound in them. also both have a end in an n sound. both also have five syllables.
But there’s more to it than that.
1) “‘a” is a shortening of “gonna”, which is uncommon, so misparsing it as an indefinite article is a likely outcome.
2) “land” probably has a relatively unpronounced /d/, so it comes out like “lan”, which makes the mishearing as “man” more likely.
3) “working man” is a common phrase that has lots of semantic support from context. Top-down processing would sure bias you toward this solution!