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A mondegreen is a misheard phrase, and the word itself comes from one. As a child, Sylvia Wright heard a line of a Scottish ballad, "and laid him on the green", as "and Lady Mondegreen". In a 1954 essay in Harper's Magazine she named such mishearings after her imaginary lady.

'The Death of Lady Mondegreen', Harper's, 1954

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The story behind the card

The ballad was 'The Bonnie Earl o' Moray', about the killing of the Earl of Moray in 1592, and Wright's mother read it aloud from Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, an eighteenth-century collection. Wright pictured Lady Mondegreen dying beside the earl and found the misheard version more moving than the real one. Mishearings like this happen because listeners fill unclear stretches of sound with words they already know, especially in songs, where the melody stretches vowels and hides the gaps between words. The Oxford English Dictionary added 'mondegreen' in 2002, and Merriam-Webster followed in 2008.

Türkçe oku
İngilizcede yanlış duyulan sözlere “mondegreen” denir. Sözcük, Sylvia Wright'ın çocukken bir İskoç baladındaki “and laid him on the green” (onu çimenlere yatırdılar) dizesini “and Lady Mondegreen” (ve Leydi Mondegreen) diye duymasından gelir. Wright bu adı 1954'te Harper's dergisindeki bir yazısında önerdi.
“The Death of Lady Mondegreen”, Harper's, 1954

Balad, 1592'de öldürülen Moray kontunu anlatan “The Bonnie Earl o' Moray”dir. Wright'ın annesi onu, 18. yüzyılda derlenmiş bir halk şiirleri kitabı olan Thomas Percy'nin Reliques of Ancient English Poetry'sinden okurdu. Küçük Sylvia, Leydi Mondegreen'in kontla birlikte can verdiğini hayal etmiş, yanlış duyduğu dizeyi gerçeğinden daha dokunaklı bulmuştu. Bu tür yanlış duymalar, dinleyicinin belirsiz kalan sesleri zaten bildiği sözcüklerle doldurmasından kaynaklanır. Şarkılarda daha da sık görülür, çünkü ezgi ünlüleri uzatır ve sözcüklerin arasındaki sınırları siler. “Mondegreen”, 2002'de Oxford İngilizce Sözlüğü'ne, 2008'de de Merriam-Webster sözlüğüne girdi.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Mondegreen
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