Procupines & Ear Accidents

Mark Liberman, in a piece* at Language Log, wrote with the title "Ear Accidents" about a visit to England and a discussion with one Jock McNaught, who kept talking about "Ear Accidents". Liberman wondered whether McNaught might be referring to something like ear piercings gone bad or some such, when he discovered that it was a pronunciation/hearing issue and that McNaught was actually talking about "air accidents" — airplanes flying into other airplanes and the like.

Which was a shame. I was convinced that I had finally found someone ready to talk about my idea of "ear accidents", a good phrase really to describe a phenomenon I occasionally experience along the lines of creative mis-hearing. With somewhat more frequency than I might like — although the results can be entertaining enough — I mis-hear some phrase and, as my brain tries to understand it creates some near-sounding phrase which makes some sense grammatically but almost never makes sense in the speaker's context.

Constructing the substitute phrase takes a bit of time, naturally, and usually I just go on the assumption that when I don't quite hear something being said to me, if I wait a little bit the meaning may finally appear. But those times when it doesn't ultimately appear, I'm left with asking the speaker: "please, could you repeat what you said two sentences ago?" Typically, they've forgotten by then anyway.

One of the oddest ear accidents I can remember happened more than a decade ago. Isaac and I were at the wedding of a long-time friend of mine. The preacher was talking to the betrothed, and rather to my surprise said "Today, XY and XX, you are unique among porcupines."

Well! That struck me as an odd locution. I glanced around, but the rest of those congregated appeared to think nothing was amiss — they must have thought he said something else. However, I couldn't think of a more-usual alternative to his missive. I asked around and everyone claimed that they couldn't think of any likely answer.

A few years passed and then XY and XX came to visit. To my delight, they brought the videotape of their marriage ceremony! At last, we'd have incontrovertible evidence: either the preacher said "you are unique among porcupines", or else he was recorded saying something else that sounded enough like it for me to recognize my error.

We watched the entire tape, listening carefully, and heard nothing untoward or suggestive. However, there was one portion of the tape, lasting about 18 seconds (it made us think of the 18 minutes "accidentally" erased out of those Nixon tapes all those years ago), where the sound quality was disrupted and we couldn't make out anything at all. Was that where the phrase was uttered, whatever it was? We'll probably never solve this riddle.

Anyway, I think "ear accident" will serve quite well to describe this affliction.
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*Mark Liberman, "Ear Accidents", Language Log, 16 November 2006.

Posted on November 28, 2006 at 02.01 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Reflections, Such Language!

3 Responses

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  1. Written by S.W. Anderson
    on Tuesday, 28 November 2006 at 03.55
    Permalink

    I don't think I've had ear accidents, but can relate to the phenomenon because of something I have experienced, although not in awhile now.

    There have been times when I was trying to quickly say something, expressing two related but distinct thoughts, and so uttered a word or expression that was a sort of morph of the two things. As you might expect, this at times had me saying something ridiculous or unintelligible. I would usually hurriedly correct it by restating what I had said choosing one of the two things.

    I think this happened during animated discussions when I was tired and/or stressed. And yes, it can be embarrassing.

  2. Written by rightsaidfred
    on Tuesday, 28 November 2006 at 23.27
    Permalink

    I work outdoors, often at a distance from others, and around noisy machinery, so "ear accidents" are quite frequent with me.

    I recall one rich episode that occurred at a mildly noisy gathering that involved trade products, one with the initials "L.I.", the other with the name "ally".

  3. Written by Bearcastle Blog
    on Friday, 8 December 2006 at 17.35
    Permalink

    Mind Groans

    Last week I wrote about "ear accidents", the occasional problem I have in which my mind scrambles to make sense of something it mishears, thereby scrambling the meaning of what was said. Although "ear accidents" is a useful phrase, it struck me as …

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