The Wunnerful World of Werds
Yesterday, No. 5 son (age 5) strolled up to me and asked “How do you spell ‘babe’?”
“That’s easy,” I said. “E-V-A-L-O-N-G-O-R-I-A.”
He gave me a skeptical look and said, “No, no, no. Like Babe Ruth, the baseball player.”
While asking me this, he seemed to be hiding something behind his back, so I started tickling him and he revealed his secret: a baseball which he had “autographed” with the Great Bambino’s “signature.”
He came pretty close to getting it right. He’d spelled it “Baeb Ruht.”
Hey, I’ve seen worse. So have the citizens of Livermore, California. A couple years ago, the town built a brand spanking new public library. One of its features is a beautiful mural of tiles installed in the building’s grand entrance.
The mural honors great thinkers, philosophers, artists and writers from throughout human history, with images of these immortal geniuses, and the person’s name inscribed next to the image.
Unfortunately, the spelling of some of the names suggested that the artist had personally never gone anywhere near a library.
Here are a few of the actual misspellings: “Eistein” instead of Einstein; “Shakespere” instead of Shakespeare; “Gaugan” instead of Gauguin. My favorite is probably Vincent Van Gogh, whose name was rendered “Vangough.”
Giving credit where it’s due, the artist correctly spelled tough names like Giacometti, Delacroix and Archipenko (who everyone knows made up three-fourths of the New York Yankees infield in the days of Baeb Ruht.)
My point – which I desperately hope to fabricate out of thin air by the end of this sentence – is that spelling things correctly, word in and word out, is tough, hard, painstaking work. And I'm reely proud to do it rite 750 times every week, 52 weeks every year.
Well, except for those that I misspell intentionally. See, when you spot a misspelt word in my columns, it’s always – ALWAYS – there on porpoise. Actually, because of their HGQ (High Guffaw Quotient), these words are even greater treasures, don't you think?
Truly, there’s great power in the garbled word. For example, spoofing the phractured phraseology of our current Commander-in-Chief has made a number of comedians and impersonators really rich.
Now I’m not going to suddenly start picking on Dubya. I have far better sources of wacky wordplay: My kids! Anyone who has kids, or ever was a kid – and I’m told that includes at least 80% of the people reading this blog – knows that kids sometimes just can’t spit the right word out. And at moments like those, it’s the duty of a loving and supportive parent to write down the gaffe so that child can be mocked in a column. Examples from my own household include:
> No. 1 son’s memorable childhood rendering of “barbecue sauce,” which to this day my family refers to as “cue-barber” sauce.
> As a tyke, No. 2 son never followed the instructions while building his Lego toys – he always followed the “constructions.”
> A couple years ago, No. 3 was describing with wonder “The Price Is Right” TV show (which he’d never seen until we let No. 1 baby-sit him.) He excitedly described how a contestant won a big prize after she had not “spun,” but “span” the wheel.
> Nowadays, No. 4 speaks clearly, from his dental fricatives to his dipthongs. But when he was small, for some reason “bathing suit” used to come out “baling suit.” (For the record, No. 4 wants me to clarify that his swimsuit is a basic pair of trunks, and NOT some racy dipthong.)
> Our house is presently held by an occupying force of some 3,300 X-Men toys. One of them is named “Apocalypse.” Which No. 5 used to pronounce “Pocket Lips.”
Now, it’s your turn. Grab that keyboard and e-mail me the funny ways in which you or someone you know has lost a wrasslin’ match with the English language. I’ll take the garbled words and phrases you provide, and share the goofiest examples with the world. Or at least that portion of the world that reads this blog.
So start writing! I expect the number of contributions to be – in the words of No. 4 son – JARGANTIC!
# # #
TakefiveT5@yahoo.com.
“That’s easy,” I said. “E-V-A-L-O-N-G-O-R-I-A.”
He gave me a skeptical look and said, “No, no, no. Like Babe Ruth, the baseball player.”
While asking me this, he seemed to be hiding something behind his back, so I started tickling him and he revealed his secret: a baseball which he had “autographed” with the Great Bambino’s “signature.”
He came pretty close to getting it right. He’d spelled it “Baeb Ruht.”
Hey, I’ve seen worse. So have the citizens of Livermore, California. A couple years ago, the town built a brand spanking new public library. One of its features is a beautiful mural of tiles installed in the building’s grand entrance.
The mural honors great thinkers, philosophers, artists and writers from throughout human history, with images of these immortal geniuses, and the person’s name inscribed next to the image.
Unfortunately, the spelling of some of the names suggested that the artist had personally never gone anywhere near a library.
Here are a few of the actual misspellings: “Eistein” instead of Einstein; “Shakespere” instead of Shakespeare; “Gaugan” instead of Gauguin. My favorite is probably Vincent Van Gogh, whose name was rendered “Vangough.”
Giving credit where it’s due, the artist correctly spelled tough names like Giacometti, Delacroix and Archipenko (who everyone knows made up three-fourths of the New York Yankees infield in the days of Baeb Ruht.)
My point – which I desperately hope to fabricate out of thin air by the end of this sentence – is that spelling things correctly, word in and word out, is tough, hard, painstaking work. And I'm reely proud to do it rite 750 times every week, 52 weeks every year.
Well, except for those that I misspell intentionally. See, when you spot a misspelt word in my columns, it’s always – ALWAYS – there on porpoise. Actually, because of their HGQ (High Guffaw Quotient), these words are even greater treasures, don't you think?
Truly, there’s great power in the garbled word. For example, spoofing the phractured phraseology of our current Commander-in-Chief has made a number of comedians and impersonators really rich.
Now I’m not going to suddenly start picking on Dubya. I have far better sources of wacky wordplay: My kids! Anyone who has kids, or ever was a kid – and I’m told that includes at least 80% of the people reading this blog – knows that kids sometimes just can’t spit the right word out. And at moments like those, it’s the duty of a loving and supportive parent to write down the gaffe so that child can be mocked in a column. Examples from my own household include:
> No. 1 son’s memorable childhood rendering of “barbecue sauce,” which to this day my family refers to as “cue-barber” sauce.
> As a tyke, No. 2 son never followed the instructions while building his Lego toys – he always followed the “constructions.”
> A couple years ago, No. 3 was describing with wonder “The Price Is Right” TV show (which he’d never seen until we let No. 1 baby-sit him.) He excitedly described how a contestant won a big prize after she had not “spun,” but “span” the wheel.
> Nowadays, No. 4 speaks clearly, from his dental fricatives to his dipthongs. But when he was small, for some reason “bathing suit” used to come out “baling suit.” (For the record, No. 4 wants me to clarify that his swimsuit is a basic pair of trunks, and NOT some racy dipthong.)
> Our house is presently held by an occupying force of some 3,300 X-Men toys. One of them is named “Apocalypse.” Which No. 5 used to pronounce “Pocket Lips.”
Now, it’s your turn. Grab that keyboard and e-mail me the funny ways in which you or someone you know has lost a wrasslin’ match with the English language. I’ll take the garbled words and phrases you provide, and share the goofiest examples with the world. Or at least that portion of the world that reads this blog.
So start writing! I expect the number of contributions to be – in the words of No. 4 son – JARGANTIC!
# # #
TakefiveT5@yahoo.com.
posted by Don Stuart at 1:26 PM
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