Amusing misreads.

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Sometimes, I accidentally misread sentences with amusing results. For example, when I was younger I read a newspaper article about politics. I misread "Labour saves parliament debate" as "Labrador" and so I ended up with some rather amusing visual imagery with a dog running about in the houses of parliament. Afterwards, I was slightly disappointed to find out that this wasn't the case. Seems like a more interesting story if you ask me.

Here's a more recent one. When I was on the bus today (as of the submission of this thread) I read a sign:

That's what I thought it said. I proceeded to wonder if there was some kind of trend among bus drivers to be lonely. After thinking about this for a short while, I realise the sign actually read:



One time I read a poster about being environmentally conscious (which read "Planet Earth Is Blue") as "Piggy Blue Earth Is". However, in this particular case the reason was sleep deprivation.

My relationship with language is an odd one. Usually, I don't have any issues with reading words. It's typically numbers and music notes that give me trouble. However, there are some reoccurring issues that I have with words. These are;

- Accidentally skipping to a different part of the page when I'm reading a sentence. I do this a lot less often than I used to, in the past it was a bit of an issue but then I stopped doing it. Or so I thought. I tend to find that this happens if I'm getting bored. Only happens on occasion thankfully.

-OK, so this is a bit of an odd one. I'll know what a word means, and I've seen it before. So, I should recognise it. However, once in a while I'll see a word that I'm aware of but it won't fully register. I'll look at it, and think "how do I say that?" This happened with the word contagion. I know what it means, and I've seen it before. Also, I know the spelling. I know how to say it. But for some reason I didn't realise I was looking at the word contagion, for a moment I thought it was a different word. A new one.

So I asked someone to read it out to me, and they asked "You don't know how to pronounce contagion? Do you not know how to read or something?" then it clicked. I wondered for a moment how I hadn't recognised it. Somehow I just forgot about the existence of that word.

-Random stuttering when reading out loud. It can be annoying. Not just getting stuck on letters though, sometimes it's more along the lines of "mana-man-ma-manaq-manne-manneqwuin...mannequin".

However, this doesn't always happen. I often have no issue. Sometimes I say mannequin with no problem whatsoever. This happens when talking in conversation as well, so it's a less a reading thing and more of an overall language thing. Usually I'm more likely to just get stuck on a letter sound (b-b-bearable or be-be-bearable). My stutter has become a lot less frequent, so it tends to catch people off-guard whenever it decides to show up.

This sort of thing used to me happen all the time.

Have you ever heard funny lyrical mistakes such as “There’s a bathroom on the right” for “There’s a bad moon out tonight” in the Creedence Clearwater Revival song “Bad Moon Rising.”

Because I used to often jump lines or read things wrong, (I can identify with all what you write, and I can remember times when I was in school with a mind blank moment where I was about 9 years old asking how to spell the word "The", when we were having 14 letter words in spelling tests, and almost into algibra (Which I did at the next year at the age of 10), and in secondary school I was even kore embarissed when I had to ask someone how to spell the word "A" when my mind hand gone blank! Luckily everyone thought it was a joke.
But I now know why I did so well on the railways, as though I was slow reading and writing, I would put much more effort to read then the average person, and so I would see things that others missed. This is why I did well in railway tests.

I have to laugh. I remember manynof us who went to the first of the railway job interviews which was a series of more basic tests. They all gave us an exam paper which we were not allowed to look at until they said to turn it over. When they said "Go", and they started the stopwatch, the exam paper said "Please read all questions carefully". It then said "Do not answer the questions. Just write your name at the end of the exam paper".

Well. Just a few of us did that out of all those who sat the exam. The rest ploughed through the papers answering these complex maths questions... It was hillarious. The one taking the exam motioned to us to keep quiet. We just sat there trying to keep a straight face! Occasionally one of the others would look up and see us just sitting there, and look puzzled but carry on... Half an hour later the time came to an end. Everyone who did the exam failed. It was such a hillarious test! It was so funny when the ones who assumed they were in with a chance and assumed we had failed were told they had failed the exam.
It was all about reading instructions.

Last edited by Mountain Goat on 27 Jul 2019, 5:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Someone started a whole thread about misreading the titles of threads just here on this site.

I had never heard of ABA Therapy. So when I saw "ABA Therapy. Does it work?" my only possible reaction was to think "only if you're 17, and only if you are dancing queen".

I was looking through the Science Fiction section of the library long ago and misread a title, McGarr and the Siense Conspiracy," as "McGarr and the Siamese Conspiracy." I'm obviously obsessed with cats!

Lol this happened to me too at one point!

MountainGoat,

I have a good vocabulary, but I've had embarrassing brain freezes of the kind you describe when reading out loud. The words I stumbled on are really embarrassing when I think about them.

Greek writer Nicolas Gage (born Nicola Gatzoyiannis in Lia, Northern Greece), recalled in his book, "A Place For Us," that, in second grade, he misread the word "weapon" as "we-pee-on." In adulthood, he went on to cover organized crime, as well as writing the story of his mother, Eleni Gatzoyannis, killed by the Greek Communists in the 1940s.

I had a funny one once in my teens. I read an entire horror story (Meant for young teenagers) and I didn't make any sense of it. It was a big thick book of 1000 stories for kids. This story took me about two days to read. I was puzzled. What is a "Vi car"? In my mind I had read it as if it was two words. The whole story made no sense. Then I asked my Mum at the end of the story what a vi car was? She said "Vicar"... A priest! Well. I couldn't be bothered to read the whole story again!

I remember the word "vicar" from Keeping Up Appearances. That was so funny!

In my town there are signs for a Run to Help Children, but I keep reading these as Run to Children for Help.

Also, whenever I see a sign for _______ Realty, I also read "Realty" as "Reality," which leads to some amusing phrases.

Haha. Yes. I have known people like Mrs Bucket in real life. They are mostly lower class who like people to think they are upper class.

I know what reality is. Realty? In Welsh ty means house. Real house?

Yeah, something like Outstanding Realty would be a business that would help sell houses.