I remember in seventh grade getting teased for reading books with sex scenes. An eighth grader friend of mine was gushing over "Wicked", which she had just read, and blushingly admitting it had explicit sex scenes, and I made the mistake of remarking that they weren't particularly more explicit than the scenes in a lot of other books. Mind you, she's the one who corrected my pronunciation of "whore" when we were in fifth and sixth grade. (I'd only ever read it, so until she corrected me I'd thought it was a homophone of "war" rather than of "hoar". Ever since then I've been hyperaware of the sounds of the opening lines of "Evangeline".)
Heh. My tenth grade English teacher once told me to stop reading porn (jokingly, but she had a very dry delivery). I was reading The English Patient at the time and had just finished The Thorn Birds because my mom had made me watch the miniseries with her.
That class also had a lot of instances like the one you describe, of humorous mispronunciation. Well, that was mostly a small group of us clustered in desks against the wall rather than the whole class, but there were things like "heretofore" -- my friend thought it was her-ET-uh-for -- and colonel (you can guess).
I can remember for a lot of words the occasion on which I learned the correct pronunciation. For "colonel" it was my father reading aloud "Tintin and the Broken Ear". Because he read the Tintin books aloud to me, I am always startled to hear people pronounce the character's name as if it were an English word.
Tintin! I love those books. I've always had a crush on the Captain. I probably pronounce his (i.e., Tintin's) name wrong, though, since I've never heard it out loud.
I remember several as well. One that's coming to mind right now is the moment (in that same English class) when I learned that sonofagun, which I'd come across in some Star Trek paperback, was not the strange term "sun-OFF-uh-gun" but the regular old phrase all stuck together as one word.
Yes. Tinn tinn sounds like "Rin-tin-tin", which I'm not familar with except as sounds, which I then associate with Rikki-tikki-tavi. The mind is a twisty place, and it all leads to mongooses in the end.
Hee. Rikki-tikki-tavi sends me to the children's book about the kid named... was it Rikki-tikki-tembo-no-sa-rembo-cherry-berry-ruchi-pip-perry-...pembo? Something about him falling down a well and his name took so long to say that it took a while to get him help. Or something.
The rhythm and repetition make it easier to remember, I think. Heh. I have a vague memory of reading it or picking it up at our public library, along with audio book combo packs of things like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
It was more of a listen-as-you-read deal. The books did have some narration, even though the art was the best part. So I guess you'd listen to the story and look at the pictures...?
Forever was all the rage when I was in Grade 7 and we passed a copy around the class. I don't actually remember it being all that racy or explicit, but my mother caught me reading it one night when he bridge club was over and made me stand in the middle of the living room while she judged for herself. Of course it opened immediately to the only interesting sex scene, but that's what we read over and over...
She once told me that when she was first married, she was reading The Carpetbaggers in bed and had to keep nudging my father awake to ask him what certain words meant. I remember reading the book when I was 13 or 14 and I couldn't for the life of me figure out which words she didn't understand!
Hee! I sort of had the opposite experience. Whilst exploring my parent's bedroom when I was a kid (I don't remember my exact age, but I was probably about 10), I found a very well-hidden and well-perused copy of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Naturally, I borrowed it to read. What an eye-opener!
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That class also had a lot of instances like the one you describe, of humorous mispronunciation. Well, that was mostly a small group of us clustered in desks against the wall rather than the whole class, but there were things like "heretofore" -- my friend thought it was her-ET-uh-for -- and colonel (you can guess).
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I remember several as well. One that's coming to mind right now is the moment (in that same English class) when I learned that sonofagun, which I'd come across in some Star Trek paperback, was not the strange term "sun-OFF-uh-gun" but the regular old phrase all stuck together as one word.
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Yes. Tinn tinn sounds like "Rin-tin-tin", which I'm not familar with except as sounds, which I then associate with Rikki-tikki-tavi. The mind is a twisty place, and it all leads to mongooses in the end.
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She once told me that when she was first married, she was reading The Carpetbaggers in bed and had to keep nudging my father awake to ask him what certain words meant. I remember reading the book when I was 13 or 14 and I couldn't for the life of me figure out which words she didn't understand!
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That first situation sounds absolutely mortifying, though. I shudder in sympathy.
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