Mondegreen Singing Kittens

I would never normally post something like this but it was just too cute. I mean the kitten really looks like it is singing.

A Pseudo-Mondegreen for Linguists

Do you remember the Prince song Automatic from the album 1999?


If not, here is a video from youtube of a live version of the song -



And the chorus -

A-u-t-o-matic

Just tell me what 2 do

A-u-t-o-matic

I'm so in love with U

Well...


whenever I hear the song, I want to sing -



I-d-i-o-matic


Another favorite is Carly Simon's Anticipation, to which I sing -



Alliteration

Props for a Vocabulary Update

Back in February of this year I posted about the word props and an observant reader, Joseph Christina RN, sent me the following which I thought I would share.

I was recently asked the origin of the phrase “giving props” to someone. The general attribution on the net is to rappers in the 80’s. Some further digging indicated that the phrase came into broader use after Aretha Franklin used the phrase in her cover of “Respect” in 1967. Although the song was written and released by Otis Redding in 1965, Aretha added the line:

“I'm about to give you all of my money - And all I'm askin' in return, honey - Is to give me my props”

Apparently, I’m not the first person trying to track this down. Below is an excerpt from The New York Times:

Bernard Schneider of Falmouth Foreside, Me., recalled that ''during a recently aired Ed Bradley interview of the artist on '60 Minutes,' he inferred that her artistic plea for propers was for adoration and attention of a sexual nature.''
That torrent of informed correction drove me to J. Redding Ware's 1909 ''Passing English of the Victorian Era,'' which touches lightly on the term as ''erotic.''
Reached during a tour that took her through Washington, Franklin is having none of that. Her use of propers (which many heard as profits ) in the lyric was her own, not in the words originally written and performed by Otis Redding in 1965.
''I do say propers ,'' says the queen of soul. ''I got it from the Detroit street. It was common street slang in the 1960's. The persons saying it has a sexual connotation couldn't be further from the truth. 'My propers ' means 'mutual respect' -- what you know is right.''

The original version of the article is available at http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/28/magazine/28ONLANGUAGE.html
Aretha’s version of "Respect" was recorded on February 14, 1967, and we have her stating that it was “common street slang” in the Detroit area at that time.

Thank you for sharing Joseph; you deserve props. This was much more information than I came up with during my brief search. Also, I have lived in the Detroit area all of my life and have heard Aretha's version of the song more times than I can count so I am amazed that I never noticed the word before. I must have heard it as a mondegreen.

Mondegreen Green Grass of Home

To stick with the theme of yesterday's post about oronyms, very similar to oronyms are mondegreens. While oronyms result from not knowing where one word ends and the next begins in speech, mondegreens usually result from hearing entirely different words that sound similar. And more importantly, the term mondegreen is generally used when referring to song lyrics.

Here are some examples of mondegreens:

Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix
"Excuse me while I kiss the sky." heard as "Excuse me while I kiss this guy."
Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater
"There's a bad moon on the rise." heard as "There's a bathroom on the right."
Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds by The Beatles
"The girl with kaleidoscope eyes." heard as "The girl with colitis goes by."
Higher Love by Steve Winwood
"Bring me a higher love." heard as "Bring me an iron lung."
When The World Is Running Down by The Police
"You make the best of what's still around." heard as "You make the best homemade stew around."
Kodachrome by Paul Simon
"Mama don't take my Kodachrome away." heard as "Mama don't take my clothes 'n' throw 'em away."

If you are wondering how the term mondegreen came to be used for this phenomenon, it dates back to a 1954 Harper magazine column by Sylvia Wright. Wright had always believed that the last line of the first stanza in the Scottish folk ballad The Bonny Earl of Murray was: "And Lady Mondegreen." when in actuality it is: "And they laid him on the Green." So thanks to Sylvia Wright we have the word mondegreen.