May

10

Right, Wrong, And Spoonerisms.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

May 10, 2008 |

 

In his article Saying It Wrong On Purpose, Grant Barrett lists numerous examples of his and his wife’s purposeful mispronunciation of words, saying,

My wife says aminal instead of ‘animal’ and maters instead of ‘tomatoes.’ I sometimes say ‘muscles’ so that the ‘c’ has a ‘k’ sound (the same way the cartoon character Popeye says it), computor instead of “computer” (after Ned Beatty’s exaggerated pronunciation of “Mr Luthor” in the Superman movies), and I occasionally say benimber instead of “remember” because it was something my cousin Paul said more than 20 years ago.

He also cites one of my favorite phrases, which I try to throw into conversation at least once a week: “one swell foop”, which is a spoonerism of “one fell swoop”. For more fun with spoonerisms, check out Fabelbish, a spoonerism-generator.

The funny thing is that while we’re often judged by the way we speak, misspeaking on porpoise is a complexer issue. Is it making fun of people who think a big building full of books really is a “liberry”, or is it a way of acknowledging that we all make nistakes? I’m not sure, and Mr. Barrett, who is a lexicographer and is married to a linguist, doesn’t provide any answers, probably because language is in a constant state of flux. The rong word today could be right tomorrow.

 


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Claire on May 10, 2008 12:27 pm

    Hav eye gut it rong, butt eye c no Monster!

    Although I see no doodle monster, I am glad I popped over as its a good post :)

    I think the texting and instant messaging generation also play a part in the intentional mispellings as most of the time they are too lazy to spell it properly. I include myself in that bracket at times.

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