Interrogator

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An interrogator denotes (usually unintentionally) misunderstood parts of text, for example from songs or poems . Parts of text that are misunderstood by native speakers in their own language are also known as mondegreen . The process in which words in a foreign language are interpreted as similar-sounding words in another language, usually in one's own language, is referred to by the Japanese word soramimi ( Japanese 空 耳 ).

English Mondegreens

The American author Sylvia Wright coined the English term Mondegreen and first used it in 1954 in an article in Harper's Magazine . As a child she had heard the old Scottish ballad The Bonnie Earl o 'Moray , which she thought included the line:

“ They ha'e slain the Earl o 'Moray / And Lady Mondegreen. ”
('You killed the Earl of Moray / And Lady Mondegreen.')

She later learned that the lines really read:

“ They ha'e slain the Earl o 'Moray / And laid him on the green. ”
('They killed the Earl of Moray / And laid him on the grass.')

Historical mondegreens of the English language that were lexicalized through reanalysis are, for example, an ewt → a newt , an ekename → a nickname , a naddre → an adder , a naranj → an orange or sam-blind → sand blind . In Spanish , a similar process led to the name form Diego for Jakob.

The name of the Australian publisher Lonely Planet can also be traced back to an interrogator. The author Tony Wheeler heard the song Space Captain by Joe Cocker and Leon Russell in the film Mad Dogs & Englishmen and understood the words lonely planet instead of lovely planet in the text passage “once while traveling across the sky this lovely planet caught my eye” .

German Mondegreens

In 2004, Axel Hacke and Michael Sowa presented with their book The White Negro Wumbaba - The Small Handbook of Interrogation (as interrogator of "the white fog wonderful" from the song The Moon Has Risen ), mainly German interrogator examples. After a few columns in the Süddeutsche Zeitung , Hacke received more and more letters with interrogators that led to the book. He came to the conclusion that "hardly anybody ever understands a song text correctly" and that these are only there to "provide people with material so that their imaginations can work." There are now the following volumes The White Negro Wumbaba Returns (2007), Wumbaba's Legacy (2009) and From Canada to Wumbaba (2010).

In 2005, the book From polar bear salad to knuckle directory was published. The best interrogators of the German language by the Viennese author Roman Kellner. In addition to mainly Austrian interrogators, there is also a chapter on the psycholinguistic background for the interrogation . In 2012 the book Luftabong & Popapier was published , in which the children's book author Charlotte Habersack collected interrogators from children.

Interrogators

Since 2007, program corners have been running in many radio programs, in which "reported" interrogators are regularly broadcast by listeners under different names. These are German text passages that are heard in mainly English pieces. Lower Saxony's radio station FFN resulted in its program the category of "Granny fell-ins Loo Song" (from instead of "Oh, my feelings grow" a Midnight Lady of Chris Norman ), in which they collect interrogators. To date, the associated online library has over 300 entries.

Examples are “Agathe Bauer” (instead of “I've got the power” from the song The Power by SNAP! ) And “Anneliese Braun” (instead of “All the leaves are brown” from California Dreamin ' by The Mamas and the Papas ) and “You have to order drunk” (instead of “It must've been something you said” from (I Just) Died in Your Arms by Cutting Crew ). The Italian line of text “Mi manca da Spezzare” in the song Laura non c'è by Nek became “Nobody can pay for that”.

Web links

Wiktionary: interrogator  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b einestages.spiegel.de: If you don't want to hear, you have to giggle
  2. ↑ William Cowan, Jaromira Rakušan: Source Book for Linguistics . 3rd revised edition. John Benjamin Publishing Company, Amsterdam, Philadelphia 1998, ISBN 1-55619-516-8 , pp. 179 .
  3. ↑ Interrogation hammers ( memento from November 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) at Bayern 3
  4. ↑ Grandma's collection fell into the toilet songs on ffn.de.
  5. ^ Agathe Bauer Songs on Hitradio RTL Sachsen
  6. ↑ Anneliese-Braun-Songs  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) at Saarländischer Rundfunk@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.sr-online.de