My father has an unusual affliction. He doesn’t see it as a problem—he might not even realize he has it. For as long as I can remember, my father has been beset by Spoonerism.
My dictionary defines Spoonerism as “a verbal error in which a speaker accidentally transposes the initial sounds or letters of two or more words, often to humorous effect.” It was named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner, who was notoriously prone to this type of mistake.
While my father seems to do it intentionally at times, he also seems to do it compulsively. When we were visiting my sister and her family in DePere, Wisconsin, my father—an avid angler—expressed his earnest desire to go fishing on the Rox Fiver. You would know it better as the Fox River. And he doesn’t just say it once; he’ll tell my mother, “The Rox Fiver, Sandy! Let’s go fishing on the Rox Fiver! Don’t you want to go to the Rox Fiver?”
My sister’s husband famously tried to get my father to indulge his Spoonerism by repeating questionable phrases in front of him. For example, he kept saying the name of former Green Bay Packers football player Cletidus Hunt — or worse, the phrase “cunning stunt” — as well as the town where he and my sister attended college, Beaver Falls. Fortunately, it never worked.
I’m not afflicted with Spoonerism, but I have my own habits, my own obsessions when it comes to words and their sounds. I enjoy repeating certain words and phrases, over and over. I love the pronunciations of foreign languages, despite the fact that I’m apparently too lazy to learn them. And I’ve loved poetry ever since college. One of my favorites is Kay Ryan’s poem “On the Difficulty of Drawing Oneself Up,” from The Niagara River:
One does not stack.
It would be like
a mouse on the back
of a mouse
on a mouse’s back.
Courses of mice,
layers of shivers
and whiskers,
a wobbling tower
mouse-wide,
with nothing more
than a mouse inside.
What I love most about this poem is the repetition of the vowel sounds, the consonants, and the motif of the mouse. I also enjoy the almost-repetition of the slant rhymes in “shivers” and “whiskers,” as well as the more subtle pairing of “tower” and “more.”
Now Hailey Leithauser’s poem, “Guidelines: Writing the Sonnet”:
It must be quiet:
heart’s I am, I am
like a faint purred thrum
of insect wing hit
against draped pane. Let
each own its rhythm,
but privately, slim
breath that’s kept discreet.
Try to picture it
as a slattern hemmed
in by a corset,
tempered by wisdom,
mulling a solemn
dress of green velvet.
As in Ryan’s poem, here again we have a seductive repetition of sounds. The ending consonants of “quiet,” “hit,” “let” and “velvet,” or “am,” “thrum,” “rhythm” and “slim.” Poems like these make me ridiculously happy; I can read them over and over again.
Like many people, I also have a habit of repeating favorite song lyrics over and over in my head—and it’s important to me to get the delivery right. I’ve loved Led Zeppelin ever since I was 12 years old, so when my mind is not otherwise engaged, Zeppelin lyrics pop into my head without fail. Almost every time I see a flock of pigeons or starlings, for example, I think of the line “Into the sun, the south, the north, at last the birds have flown / Shackles of commitment fell in pieces on the ground” from the song “Achilles’ Last Stand.” When I’m alone, I try to capture Robert Plant’s cadence as best I can, even though I can’t sing to save my life.
I’m still fairly puzzled as to why we humans take so much pleasure in the sounds of certain words. And what puzzles me is not the mere fact that we mindlessly regurgitate them, but the intensity and compulsion with which we do it. Dr. Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, the director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas, likens repetition in music to the rituals anthropologists are so keen to study. She says that “the repetition of gestures makes it harder and harder to resist imaginatively modelling them, feeling how it might be to move your own hand in the same way.”
Seems to me the desire for repetition is not so much cerebral or rational as it is visceral—a holistic necessity for the human animal. Maybe that’s why our interest in the reverberations of certain sounds is so pervasive. Having words or phrases turn into music engages us on a deep level, stimulating our fascination with ritual. We feel compelled to repeat the sounds we hear and love.
My predilection for the parroting of sounds isn’t limited to human language, either. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with birds and birdsong. When I got mononucleosis in the sixth grade and had to stay home for a month, my parents bought me a recording of birds and their calls from the Audubon Society, and I listened to it every day. It filled up most of the day because it had so many birds on it—from the smallest finches at the backyard feeder to the largest seabirds circling the highest cliffs.
It’s been said that “music has charms to soothe the savage breast,” and perhaps the recitation, the repetition of certain sounds is a way for us to self-soothe. As Dr. Margulis also notes, music is loaded with repetition. We intuitively know that familiarity can be calming. That might explain why I kept listening to my birdsong record over and over again when I was at home sick. Not only did I feel terrible, I was also bored and lonesome, and the repitition was familiar, comforting.
Of course, this doesn’t fully explain why, 30 years later, I still feel compelled to imagine a trilling osprey kettling high above a lake, or a white-throated sparrow perched on the highest branch whistling for his mate, or the real Woody Woodpecker cackling away deep in the dense forest. I don’t repeat these calls out loud, but the desire to do so is still there, and it’s irrepressible.
Nor does it explain why I keep writing poems that combine both birds and the repetition of certain sounds, despite the fact that I’ve stopped sending these poems to literary journals. Like this one about starlings:
A starling is a starling is a starling,
with hardly any inkling of distinctness.
Yet this noisy genus nevertheless secures
its own startling niche wending tenuously
through time and space. Watch how these
Lilliputian yard-darlings prod and stab
between spears of starchy grass, each bird
wrapped in an inky fabric through which
little astral pinpricks peek, littering the lawn
with countless automata in an otherwise
aimless chain of phenomena.
In the end, I suppose I don’t really need an explanation for the pleasure I take in certain sounds and certain words. All that matters is the feeling I get from them. Sometimes you hear something and you just know it’s right—it strikes the perfect chord in you, and that’s enough. It’s a good, in and of itself.
Tags: family, language, magic, poetry, steve neumann
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I occasionally say spoonerisms. The best once was once, after I had made a grammatical error that my boyfriend teased me about: “Well, excuse me if I am not a manguage laster!”
Is there a term for flipping two syllables in the same word? No one will ever convince me the band isn’t ‘Overkill River.’
mmm… Maybe “syllable metathesis”? Metathesis is the general linguistic term for the transposition of two phonetic elements of a word or phrase. In fact, looking at the wikipedia page, syllable transposition is definitely a possible form that metathesis can take. So just “metathesis.”
If they’re adjacent syllables, “local metathesis.” If they’re non-adjacent, “long-distance metathesis,” which is what Spoonerisms generally are.
Wow, thanks. I do this a lot in my head when I’m reading. Not so much on real words, but all the time with character names. Like, until I heard it read out loud I put the “v” in “Pevensie” (from the Narnia books) at the end of their name.
What about phrases that are just slightly off? I have a friend who says things like, “sprouting off nonsense” and “volumptuous,” and insists they’re correct no matter how many times I point them out (I know I’m being obnoxious, but wow these kinds of things bother me)
Malapropisms?
Malapropisms are my unintentional when tired jam. I once very sincerely told a friend that I was not ostriching him (ostracizing/ignoring). There is usually some tenuous link to what I really mean, but that doesn’t excuse it. I know the actual words, I just seem to flit past them in a daze and land on some illogical almost homonym. I asked a vendor in work for help today because I don’t “understand the cryptic alphabet” (or speak Russian). I studied Linguistics, I know it’s Cyrillic, I just need a nap.
If the malapropism is particularly apt / fitting / humourous / ironic, it may be an eggcorn. See http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/tag/eggcorns/ for a wonderful list.
“Sprouting off nonsense” conjures a charming mental image, but “volumptuous” deeply bothers me for some reason.
These poems are absolutely fascinating. Thank you for sharing (yours and others’)!
I don’t have as many in English, but when I was learning Italian–whoa so many. #1 favorite of all time: rilievo schiacciato. I love saying it, hearing it, seeing it. Everything about it. It translates to “squished relief”, which is a kind of sculpture.
Words and sounds are awesome, much like this piece. Thanks!
“Sand hanitizer” just SOUNDS better
I feel like “Beaver Falls” doesn’t really need any additional help.
I actually had to do the Spoonerism in my head before figuring out it was the “before” version, not the “after.”
I feel like "Beaver Falls" doesn't really need any additional help.
Frequently I say the toin coss at re beginning of a game.
mmm… Maybe "syllable metathesis"? Metathesis is the general linguistic term for the transposition of two phonetic elements of a word or phrase. In fact, looking at the wikipedia page, syllable transposition is definitely a possible form that metathesis can take. So just "metathesis."
If they're adjacent syllables, "local metathesis." If they're non-adjacent, "long-distance metathesis," which is what Spoonerisms generally are.
"Sprouting off nonsense" conjures a charming mental image, but "volumptuous" deeply bothers me for some reason.
I actually had to do the Spoonerism in my head before figuring out it was the "before" version, not the "after."
Sometimes instead of earworm bits of songs I’ll get a name or phrase going round and round in my head. The last one I remember was Arundhati Roy, which joyfully led to reading a fascinating article about her lifelong activism.
Sometimes when this happens I’ll find myself saying it out loud when I’m zoning out, playing with how it rolls off the tongue.
I can really relate with how some phrases and lyrics and sounds just…call to you. I’ve memorized lyrics in other languages which I don’t really speak just because I like trying to imitate the sounds.
I also really like listening to Stephen Fry. He has some great turns of phrase. For example, in his podcast episode ruminating on language, he said [of pedants], “Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it?”
Tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth. Mmmmm.
(I’m trying to find a way to link the podcast, but so far I’ve only found this kinetic typography video with an excerpt. It’s worth listening to just for his delivery.
I can really relate with how some phrases and lyrics and sounds just…call to you. I've memorized lyrics in other languages which I don't really speak just because I like trying to imitate the sounds.
I also really like listening to Stephen Fry. He has some great turns of phrase. For example, in his podcast episode ruminating on language, he said [of pedants], "Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it?"
Tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth. Mmmmm.
(I'm trying to find a way to link the podcast, but so far I've only found this kinetic typography video with an excerpt. It's worth listening to just for his delivery.
This is great! I’ve always loved the malleable fun of language too; alliteration, rhythm, counterpoint. The king of this kind of word play is 19th century english poet Gerard Manley Hopkins:
I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing…
I mean…fucking amazing!
My dad makes spoonerisms all the time and I do…something different.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve rearranged letters in my head inside of phrases. Not just flipping initial consonants but pieces, and then switching properties like voiced or voiceless consonants and ‘short’ or ‘long’ vowels.
For example, if I hear the phrase ‘dogs leap’ I immediately hear the following:
toks leab
peks load
teaks lob
And so on. For whatever reason, I don’t rearrange liquids (/r/, /l/) unless there’s more than one of them. I have a weird set of rules about nasals (/m/ and /n/). It’s like background noise at this point, and only becomes apparent when I’m slightly stuck on a pattern (super long words, lots of syllables) and get a seriously focused expression on my face or when I inadvertently make a phrase that I find hilarious (it happens more than one might think). I only recently noticed that I do it more when I’m stressed or upset and then it seems really LOUD and unstoppable.
When I took my first undergraduate linguistics course and started learning phonology and the IPA? Oh lord, it was like coming home. I finally had terms for the things I was always switching in words.
All that being said, I LOVE LOVE LOVE language sounds and rhythm. All my English Lit papers got weird when I started studying linguistics because I focused mostly on sound devices and threw everything else away!