We've seen a lot of memes and blog prompts about the song lyrics we mis-heard as children. Did I miss the ones about the words we misread?
A lot of people misread "misled" as "mizzled"; this may even be the origin of the word "mizzle," meaning to slip away quietly, as in "They still went to church, but now they sat in the back row through the song service and mizzled out before the collection was taken up."
What popped into mind this morning was "rendezvous." It came in one of the horse stories I liked as a child; the older man who was helping the boy hero train his horse referred to a meeting as a rendezvous.
I sounded it out. I figured it had to be the same sort of word as "nervous." What would "rendezve" mean? Maybe it was an adjective, "rendezive"? What would that mean? I asked an adult who, of course, had no idea what I was talking about, but eventually I showed the adult the book. All was made clear.
My after-school sessions with French language records started that autumn.
I still can't claim to speak French. I do, however, read books in French.
No comments:
Post a Comment