Lady Mondegreen

<b>Forum for the discussion of Applied Linguistics </b>

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JuanTwoThree
Posts: 947
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 11:30 am
Location: Spain

Lady Mondegreen

Post by JuanTwoThree » Thu Jan 18, 2007 3:12 pm

I've just spotted "know wonder" for "no wonder".

On a Daily Telegraph forum since you ask. On googling it I see there are more in amongst "I know, Wonder Woman......" and so on.

It's odd because "Know wonder (that) he's still the Prime Minister" is if it's anything "Be surprised". The opposite of "No wonder (that) he's still the Prime Minister".

And it's not necessarily in a context of more general illliteracy:
"With the defensive backgrounds of Coaches Bill Belichick and John Fox, it is know wonder that these teams focus their resources on accumulating defensive talent"

It's not spellcheck either. Peeple noe whow to spel "no" iff nuthing els.

Stephen Jones
Posts: 1421
Joined: Sun May 18, 2003 5:25 pm

Post by Stephen Jones » Thu Jan 18, 2007 4:43 pm

Most strange. The combination 'know wonder' is quite common, and is it appears the name of a computer game, so I presume that is the reason. "It's Know wonder" gets 77 hits to 1,200,00 for "it's no wonder".

I don't think it's a Lady Mondegreen or a Cupertino. More likely some strange disconnect between mind and fingers, unless there is some crappy voice recognition software around!

JuanTwoThree
Posts: 947
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 11:30 am
Location: Spain

Post by JuanTwoThree » Thu Jan 18, 2007 9:07 pm

What I love about this is that I can google cupertino and pretend that I knew what it was all along.

"know wonder that" gets 57 hits, which is not many I'll grant. They look to have been written by otherwise literate and articulate people.

The oddity is partly the fact that going from "no" to "know" is complicating the thing.

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