Mondegreens

I find it interesting when I mishear song lyrics. It seems like once I interpret what the words must be, I can’t figure out what they really are-even when my interpretation makes no sense. Then for some reason I hear the words clearly and say “Oh! That’s what it really says!” I did that today with a John Mayer song.

Only recently I figured out that in the Lonely Goatherd from The Sound of Music it says “What a DUET for a girl and goatherd.” I loved Sound of Music as a child and watched the Julie Andrews version until I had every song memorized. For some reason, though, I never realized what that word was. I think that’s because she says deeyoo-et in a British accent instead of doo-et the way we Yankees would.

The funniest misheard lyric story I know is told by my dad. He is a semi-pro singer and songwriter. One day my sister, who was probably six or seven at the time, came up to him as he was practicing for a gig. “Daddy, what’s a dorfling?” She wanted to know. He had no idea what she meant and no idea why she was asking him at that particular moment. Later he realized that he’d just sung a song that had the phrase “the door flings open wide.” My adorable sister thought he was singing about the "dorflings of the wild."

Apparently, misheard lyrics like this are called mondegreens. There are a couple of collections of them on the web. The best known archive is at kissthisguy.com It was pretty informative as well as entertaining. The funniest thing to me, though, was that the banner ad on the site was for a hearing aid!