:unintended novelties

A few months ago, I was riding the bus for my errands due to my car being in the shop. The bus driver decided to take a quick lunch break in McDonald’s, so I was left to the mercy of the radio. I was sitting there idly, paying little mind to the radio and fumbling with my iPod, as I suddenly hear an announcer in an advertisement excitedly say, “Now is the time to DIE at drastically reduced prices!”

I was rather taken aback when I heard this, and it took me a quick moment to realize that the announcer had, indeed, really said “buy.” I had a bit of a laugh and jotted this down in my notepad.

I don’t really have any complex reasons for my mis-hearing; I suppose it’s due to the [b] and [d] sounds being so closely related, the words having single syllables ending with the “eye” sound.

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This is a perception error that I only just realized yesterday: In the mini-series, The 10th Kingdom, the father tells his daughter (Virginia) that he used to read her Grimm fairy tales. When he describes one story, Virginia says, “Oh, that was ‘House at Pooh Corner.’” For years, I thought the line was “Housie Brue Corner,” as if that was the name of some random children’s author. The only reason I just realized the error was because I read a quote that was credited to ‘House at Pooh Corner’ and thought of it. I think it was the enunciation of the line, but mostly my lack of lexical access to the story that caused my misperception years ago; which caused the segmentation error. Also that the father was talking about Grimm brothers as authors of stories, not the titles of the fairy tales- so I didn’t think the line would contain a story title, just a name. The line has popped up in my mind every now and then for years, because I’ve never been entire sure of the supposed author’s name. That’s also probably why I finally realized it today.

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SenatorPinto (10:45:34 AM): i slept like a dog

crazybeautiful60 (10:45:44 AM): is that good or bad?

This is a small segment of a conversation which took place online. However I still think it is a really good example of standing ambiguity, because I was not able to resolve the meaning of the sentence from the content given by the speaker. The speaker was not thinking that there were multiple ways of interpreting the sentence “I slept like a dog”.  As the listener I did not know whether “sleeping like a dog” was a good or a bad thing. 

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I just finished playing a tennis match, in which there was a series of misperceptions in the last game of the last set.

As my partner started serving the ball, he stated that the score was add in. I replied (as the ball continued to come my way) that no, it was actually add out. All he heard was the word “out”, and so he failed to retrieve the ball (even though his serve was in on my side of the court). I figured out that he had said “add Anne”, as in a point for Anne, while I had misheard the phrase as “add in”.

I believe the high frequency of the saying “add in” contributed to my misperception of the given phrase “add Anne”. Also, given the context of the situation, it is clear why my partner heard the word “out”, assuming the word’s semantics to involve the category of tennis.

Since there was so much confusion in the last serve, we both agreed to redo the point.

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Today, while having lunch with my friend, I told her about my conversation that I had had with my other friend who is studying abroad in Ireland. I said to my lunch buddy, “I asked Jane if she had any adapters.” I was talking about electrical adapters that you need to plug in American-made appliances overseas, but she heard me as saying, “I asked Emily if she had any doctors.”

After sorting out the confusion, it was easy to see why she thought I said “doctors.” She probably didn’t hear the initial schwa in “adapters” because it was unstressed. Then there were the corresponding d’s in the beginning, t’s in the middle, and rs’s at the end. Also, if I had specified the context a little better, and had said, “electrical adapters,” she probably would have been able to understand me better. We did, however, get a good laugh out of it.

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I was just listening to Bush’s State of the Union address, and I heard him say that we’d just lost a surge in Iraq. This confused me, since I thought the surge was going well and Bush was pleased with the results. Then I heard him say that the Iraqis lost a surge of their own. He went on to talk about Iraqi victory, and I realized I must have misheard.

Suddenly I realized - it was “launched”, not “lost”! He was saying that the Iraqis had launched a surge of their own. The only phonetic mismatch is that I heard “st” instead of “nched”, and I’d misheard it at least twice. Both end in alveolar stops, and all the sounds are alveolar - the nasal consonant was really the only thing that was missing. In complex consonant clusters like in “nched”, it’s not uncommon to reduce some of the consonants, so mishearing “launched” as “lost” isn’t that strange.

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So I was in my introduction to theatre design, and the teacher Kevin was discussing design meetings.  Design meetings are when a show is in the process of being produced, and the director, and the designers, and all the other people who work on the theatrical production meet together to dicuss the show. And Kevin said that an important thing that must happen for a succesful design meeting is “Eagles go out the window.”  And I was suddenly confused.  Why are there eagles in a design meeting?  We were discussing the play Antigone; Were there eagles in Antigone? Our school mascot is the eagle! Did Kevin mean that we shouldn’t bring school pride into a theatre production?  It wasn’t until a few sentences later that Kevin said: “Like I said before, EGOS go out the window.” Egos would be much more relevant in theatre collaborations.  I think it’s safe to say that I made an outside influence perception error.  Perhaps somebody was wearing a shirt that said “eagles” on it, or for some other reason I was thinking about a giant bird instead of the opinions of a costume designer.

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I was in my Math Modeling class jotting down some notes. As I was writing, the teacher was getting a little ahead of the slideshow. I chose to write down the word “symbol”, and just as I got to the “b” of the word my teacher says, “P = pollution”, creating a perception error as I wrote down the word “sympol”.

-Note: I reread this entry and thought that it was interesting how “sympol” sounds exactly like the word “simple”.  Perhaps this fact added to the confusion in the spelling.

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“Fifteen minute classes? What the heck.”

“Yeah, I know. I was so used to my hour and fifteen minute classes last semester. “

“What class is that short?”

“Most of the classes hear have that length.”

“Fifteen minutes?”

“What?”

“That’s what you said!”

“Dude, I said fifty minute classes”

“Perception error!”

“What?”

“Nothing! Nothing! You just helped me with one of my classes.”

-My conversation with Sam today.

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Intended: Jack Frost nipping at your nose.

Other “misheard lyrics” from this song:

Chipmunks roasting on an open fire,
(or) Jeff’s nuts roasting on an open fire,
Check for snipping at your nose;
You’ll tide carols being sung by the fire,
And folks dressed up like Eskimos.

Everybody knows a turkey, handsome Mr. Soul
Help to make the season bright;
Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow
Will find it hard to sleep tonight.

From The Christmas Song, by Mel Torme and Bob Wells

source: http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas…

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