There has been media chat about family using mispronounced words or phrases. I heard San fairy Ann in the HIgh Street recently - how trench-Tommy came by the original of that anyway, makes for interesting thought.

Hopstropulous was frequently used by several opinionated aunts. I also recall men often offering each other, 'Makings' ... that meant they  cigarettes - based on the old trench making method.

Night was often referred to by my parents as Dark-a-day..... my one year old effort  describing night, it seems. 

And pudding/desert is often called 'Rarders; by us. My daughter aged 6 got impatient with the adult  lunch table chat between old friends and asked when we were having Rarders...... she explained it as 'Would you rarder have cream with your strawberries or would you rarder not."    and stressing the word rather strongly.

And broccoli has long been  "Trees" since a bawling 1 yr grandson left in my care demanded it for breakfast. That took some hefty deduction on my part.

Dickens enjoyed drawing attention to mispronunciation - I assume his readership heard such and so relished  his use of it.
There must be loads about in use or is it too trivial a topic in these heady days?

My mother had an elderly relative, who died before I was born, whom she called Ansarran. Only when I began my family tree did I discover it was Aunt Sarah Anne.

Not a mispronunciation this but more a mishearing, so I'm not sure if this counts. When I was a youngster I thought that the 18th century fop who popularised Bath as a fashionable resort town was an unlikely-sounding dustman called Bone Ash.

The phrase "san fairy ann", "san ferry ann" or "san farian" (ça ne fait rien - it doesn't matter) was popularised in the 1920s when it appeared on the 'tee-to-tum' as part of the 'put and take' gambling game. Players took turns to spin the tee-to-tum and then followed the direction that fell uppermost: to take out of the pot, or put in, or lose your stake etc. I think san farian entitled the player to another spin.



This is the basic model but I have one somewhere (from my mother, although as she wasn't a gambler it probably came originally from one of her older brothers, who weren't gamblers either but they were teenage boys during the 1920s) that has various odds - 1:6, 1:3, 1:2 etc - on a second, independently spinning, six-sided 'nut' behind the main one. My mother could speak reasonable French and so knew what the original expression was, but nevertheless quite often used "san fairy ann" - always said with a deliberately flat English accent - to describe the attitude of people who didn't care or were blithely ignorant about something, much like Little Britain's Vicki Pollard saying "whatever!"

Vizzer wrote:

Not a mispronunciation this but more a mishearing, so I'm not sure if this counts. When I was a youngster I thought that the 18th century fop who popularised Bath as a fashionable resort town was an unlikely-sounding dustman called Bone Ash.

I shall view Bath in a new light now I know that Bone Ash was responsible.
Nowhere near as good as that is my mishearing of the name of the former Crewe Alexandra Manager Dario Gradi. Only when I saw it in print did I realize that he wasn't the Irishman Darry O'Grady.

The tee-to-tum : We played a cricket related game with 2 of these. First roll on the one gave dot ball, 1, 2, 4 , 6, Owzat. On Owzat the second was rolled, giving (iirc) Bowled, Caught, run Out, Not Out ,  LBW, Caught &  Bowled. We did try (in woodwork) to move to 8-sided, with additional "dot balls" and "not outs" but it had a definite bias which ruined the game. I think if I did it now I'd just use a standard wargaming D8 and a written table.

From Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary" DEINOTHERIUM, n. An extinct pachyderm that flourished when the Pterodactyl was in fashion. The latter was a native of Ireland, its name being pronounced Terry Dactyl or Peter O'Dactyl, as the man pronouncing it may chance to have heard it spoken or seen it printed.

Another bit of Anglo-French misheard slang from the WW1 trenches was "napoo". Attested in various letters from at least 1917, this seems to represent a poorly apprehended pronunciation of the French il n’y en a plus - there is no more (of it), or possibly il n'est plus - he/it is no more, which in French can also mean he/it's finished, ended, broken or dead and so somewhat like the use of the German kaput.

Of course English-to-French misunderstandings also occur. I once had some French guests staying and while I was busy serving drinks I overheard some of their conversation. They were discussing what sounded like "mon tippiton" (my what?) and then a bit later they were talking about "les diddies" (which sounded like it should be a vaudeville dance troupe, a family circus act, or maybe a brother and sister singing duet). It took me a while before I finally realised that they'd actually been discussing Monty Python and Lady Di (Diana Spencer). D'oh!

I think it's something in Yorkshire dialect where "embrasse mon cul" is rendered as "bossymyqueue" or something similar.

I know someone who moved into north Staffordshire years ago and took a job in a bookshop. A customer asked for "Shirley Coombes" books. She looked on the shelves but couldn't find any until she realized he was talking about Sherlock Holmes.

Meles meles wrote:

Another bit of Anglo-French misheard slang from the WW1 trenches was "napoo". Attested in various letters from at least 1917, this seems to represent a poorly apprehended pronunciation of the French il n’y en a plus (there is no more of it) or possibly il n'est plus (he/it is no more, which in French can also mean he/it's finished, ended, broken or dead, and so somewhat like the use of the German kaput).

The WW1 song I Won't to go Home.


Take me over the sea, Where the Allyman can’t get at me.
Oh my, I don’t want to die, I want to go home.       


"Allyman" from the French for German "Allemand"

Priscilla wrote:

 I also recall men often offering each other, 'Makings' ... that meant they  cigarettes - based on the old trench making method.

"Makings" for a cigarette is used in the dialogue of the John Wayne film True Grit set back in the 1870s. Whether it was the screen writer who put it in or whether it come from the Charles Portis' book, I don't know.
Another phrase from the film is "as tight as Dick's hatband", which is pure Victorian. George Macdonald Fraser uses the expression in his Flashman stories.

Triceratops wrote:

"as tight as Dick's hatband"

Whatever is the history/origin of that, and who was the original Dick?

Green George wrote:

I think it's something in Yorkshire dialect where "embrasse mon cul" is rendered as "bossymyqueue" or something similar.

Whilst linguistically correct, I suspect the original mis-heard French wasn't "embrasser mon cul" but was either the more explicit "biser mon cul" or perhaps the very much cruder "baiser mon cul" ... whether that was intended as an insult, a taunt, a challenge, or as an invitation.

One should always be very careful about the French verb "biser", to kiss, along with as all its conjugations and idiomatic variants, such as the innocent "faire la bise" (meaning just the French way of kissing someone by way of a greeting). It's so easy to get it wrong. But when politely greeting people who you don't want to shock and who you might perhaps like to see again (at least on civil terms), one should be particularly careful to never, ever, mis-pronounce "biser" to sound like the slang "baiser" ... unless of course it's appropriate for the company and it's what you actually intended.

Meles meles wrote:

Triceratops wrote:

"as tight as Dick's hatband"

Whatever is the history/origin of that, and who was the original Dick?

Nobody really knows for sure:

Worldwidewords

Triceratops wrote:

Green George wrote:

From Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary" DEINOTHERIUM, n. An extinct pachyderm that flourished when the Pterodactyl was in fashion. The latter was a native of Ireland, its name being pronounced Terry Dactyl or Peter O'Dactyl, as the man pronouncing it may chance to have heard it spoken or seen it printed.

Same bloke. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HkJHApgKqw

Since we're having a musical interlude it should be noted that Paul McCartney released a song called San Ferry Anne in 1976:



... presumably it was still then a fairly common phrase - or at least widely understood - even among the then groovy new set. Or was Paul just playing with interesting words, phrases, rhymes and ideas?

MM, I did a couple of years at Birkbeck College in London (evenings) and I made that mistake  about that word (thinking of the statue) in an assignment.  When I received my work back  marked the comments were positive except the lecturer had said something like (paraphrasing - it's been more than 40 years) it was unfortunate I'd used that word as it generally meant to 'enjoy sexually'.

I may have mentioned this before years ago but at school we recited a prayer called the The Memorare which included the phrase "before the I stand a sorrowful sinner".  When I was in what was then known as 'Infant 2' I wondered what an "ayestandusorrowfulsinner" was.

Ah, infantile thick ear error - At my Junior Primary school before lunch everyday we sang a small entreaty to the boss Lord above which I only unravelled years later...... i sang, 'The Izal oil wet upon thee, Oh Lord...... etc. And why not?  izal was a powerful disinfectant, at the time. and  probably just as important  to God as 'The eyes of all wait upon thee Oh Lord etc' We got dinner, any road.

I know the following was quite common but quite succint in a London primary school where I first heard this prayer when standing by the headmaster called Harold.

"Arthur Witch-art in heaven, Harold be thy name.........

I used to sing a song when swinging.
It went


"Wheezy Anna"
"Down where the watermelons grow"

The other swinging mainstay featured
"Larry the Lamb was born to be king".

This might prove useful for the July 14th when I need to sing (or at least appear to sing) the correct words - albeit thankfully not 'solo' but just along with everyone else in the village.

Brilliant! It's a shame the Six Nations is over, I would have sung along.

You should come along to one of our village festivals. Not perhaps the Fête Nationale on 14 July when our numbers are often boosted by people on holiday, but maybe on Armistice Day, 11 November, when it's just us few locals (at the last census the recorded resident population was only 278).

Nevertheless at last year's Armistice Remembrance there were still about forty of us gathered around the war memorial. The mayor fluffed his speech as usual and the traditional singing of the national anthem was, also as usual, like the singing of the school song at Hogwarts: you start whenever you want, sing to your own melody and at your own pace, and so finish when you're personally done. Stalwarts of the village, madame Cartier and madame Dupont - who both think the're the new Maria Callas - individually always try take the lead. Inevitably then, the pace quickens as they both compete to lead, while the rest of us stumble on behind trying to catch up. The mayor never seems to know the words nor even the tune. Meanwhile the village postmaster, Claude, and his boyfriend Freddie, the hairdresser - both actually members of a well-regarded regional choir - set their own tempo, albeit rather rallentando to my taste. However we all eventually get to the end, just not at the same time nor in the same key. But hey, c'est l'ésprit qui compte, non?

When you see sports people singing the UK National Anthem they always speed up towards the end getting there before the music and the professional singer (if there is one) end. God Save the Queen is also very short, some anthems go on for ages.  

My sister and her husband had a holiday home in northern France near Mayenne, they sold it about five years ago.

Professional singers make mistakes as well.

One example is "The Night they drove Old Dixie Down". Originally written and recorded by The Band, it includes the line:

"Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train
Till Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again"


Stoneman being a Union general who led a raid into Virginia and North Carolina.


When Joan Baez came to do a cover version, she recorded what she thought she'd heard, which was:


"Till so much cavalry came and tore up the tracks again"


It was still a highly successful version:

Read the story of "Mbube".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrrQT4WkbNE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4llIwk0BK8A

MarkUK wrote:

Brilliant! It's a shame the Six Nations is over, I would have sung along.

There's always next year. And don't forget the sing-along version of the Welsh national anthem Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau:

My hen’s gone and died
No more eggs shall be fried
Or scrambled or coddled or poached

Black tea and burnt toast
Is now all we can boast
Why? Why?
Why did my hen have to die?

Thinking of birds, for a while I thought the deceased 'old grey' goose whose demise one was supposed to tell Aunt Rhodie about in a childhood song was the 'Orkney goose'.

I watched an interview on the Sky news YouTube channel this morning of someone who has written a biography of the late George Michael, the singer.  The interviewer said that when her (now well into his 20s) son of pre-school age she had been driving along and a GM song "I want your sex" had come on the radio.  Her son asked her what the words of the song were and she said the words in question were "I wanna be 6".