Singled Out

It has been a while since we have had any linguistic funnies. Now that the little people are all growed up, those little language slips and mishaps get fewer and further between. 

There was Eddie pronouncing the character of 'Ginny' in Harry Potter as though it was 'Guinea' - which was mildly amusing, but also heartwarming. One of those moments when someone is reading beyond things that have appeared in their spoken vocabulary, and therefore don't deserve to be laughed at.

We did have an entertaining moment the other evening, though, in a music discussion. Gertie was talking, as she mostly does these days, about One Direction. She described one of the album tracks that Eddie knew well, and explained that he was familiar with it because it was a 'single'. Eddie was absolutely adamant that it wasn't. He got crosser and crosser at Gertie's use of the word, claiming that it most definitely wasn't a single. His explanation?

'Because the whole band sang.'

Poor Eddie got most upset as we collapsed in helpless laughter. But it's not terribly surprising that a 9-year-old doesn't know what a single is. I suspect it is a term that might fall out of use entirely before too long. I'd better not get started on spiders - or the vinyl single middles spindle jukebox adapters that I used to have to buy in order to play my records.

Currently reading: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Mispronunciation Megaboosts

Everyone has a story about the kind of mispronunciation that happens because you have only seen a word in print, never heard it spoken out loud. I can remember reading a Catherine Cookson novel (when I was way too young to be reading Catherine Cookson) and stopping to ask my mum what a w-horror was (whore). She burst out laughing when she realised what I was referring to. I'm not sure I got an adequate explanation.

Eddie, this morning, told his sister that she smelt of 'co-lodge-knee'. It took us a while to work out that he was referring to her perfume as 'cologne'.

Gilby wanted to know what people did to get sent to 'gayol' and why it was so bad.

While both caused some amusement, they get me back by uttering utterly incomprehensible game-related statements such as 'It's a nightmare because I always need to megaboost by stage four when I run out of flying monkeys.'

Or something like that.

Increasingly I find that I have nothing to contribute to mealtime conversation.

I wonder if the flying monkeys smell of colodgeknee before they megaboost, and whether that gets them out of gayol.





Currently reading: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo