
Slips of the Tongue - pepys
http://www.historytoday.com/alexander-lee/slips-tongue
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taneq
This kind of mishearing is known as a "mondegreen":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen)

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jaclaz
A needed reference to the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, actually about the
possible consequences of "careless talk", but that fits nicely on
misundrstandings/mistranslating:

"I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle."

[http://www.mostly-harmless.de/crllstlk.htm](http://www.mostly-
harmless.de/crllstlk.htm)

An actual one Italian/French is the expression (once rather common in Italian)
"La bellezza dell'asino", literally "The beauty of the donkey" used to decribe
the beauty of a young girl, coming assertedly by a mistyping/misunderstanding
of the intended French "La beauté de l'âge" (literally "The beauty of the
age") into "La beauté de l'âne" that was consequently mistranslated:

[https://books.google.it/books?id=7zYrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA205&lpg=P...](https://books.google.it/books?id=7zYrDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205#v=onepage&q&f=false)

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klipt
Interesting that most of the examples are in French. Does French possess more
easily confused near-homophones than English?

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knodi123
oh, sure! speaking as a mono-lingual american, I'm pretty certain that all
french phrases of the same length sound more or less the same (and quite
romantic).

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lillesvin
Interesting. However, none of those are slips of the tongue but rather what's
referred to as "slips of the ear". A slip of the tongue is often called a "tip
of the slongue" — an example of exactly that.

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pavel_lishin
I don't think that's accurate. "tip of the slongue" is an example of a
spoonerism; a slip of the tongue is usually what people refer think of as a
freudian slip.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoonerism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoonerism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudian_slip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudian_slip)

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tmnvix
Yes. An example would be when you say one thing but mean your mother.

