{"id":8270,"date":"2011-08-22T13:38:26","date_gmt":"2011-08-22T17:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=8270"},"modified":"2011-08-22T13:38:26","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T17:38:26","slug":"whiplash-misreadings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/whiplash-misreadings\/","title":{"rendered":"Whiplash Misreadings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"So I’m in bed last night, reading a little bit (as is customary) before shutting out the light. I finish one article and move to the next. The title of this new article is “Sleeping with the Enemy”; and the subtitle, “What happened between the Netherlands and us?”<\/p>\n

The Netherlands?<\/em>\u00a0I wonder. An enemy? Are we having problems with the Dutch which I have somehow overlooked?<\/em><\/p>\n

So I start to read the article. It opens like this:<\/p>\n

The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, is a large, mostly glass building shaped a bit like a banana. The institute sits at the southern edge of the city, in a neighborhood that still very much bears the stamp of its East German past.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Suddenly the needle in my reading mind jumps the groove: squwrawk!<\/em>\u00a0I think to myself,\u00a0Wait<\/em>, why does this start out by telling me about a building in the former East Germany?<\/em>\u00a0Then I back up to the very first words and add: …and what the hell, an institute for <\/em>evolutionary anthropology?!? What’s that got to do with geopolitics?<\/em><\/p>\n

Then I back up even further, to the New Yorker<\/em>‘s category heading: annals of evolution<\/span><\/strong>, it says.<\/p>\n

So that solves the mystery of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. But now I’m even more confused. Did we evolve from the Dutch? Say what—?!?<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

You’ve probably caught on by now, haven’t you? (Thereby compounding my embarrassment.) The word wasn’t Netherlands<\/em>. The word was Neanderthals<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This sort of thing has happened to me before. I’ll be in the kitchen making a sandwich, say, and a weird or alarming phrase will pop vividly into my mind — so vividly that I can actually see\u00a0it, which makes me realize that I actually read<\/em>\u00a0it just a moment ago, in a headline in the newspaper over here on the other counter, on my way to the pantry. I go to the paper and discover my error, but by then I’m hooked; I’ve got to read at least the opening of the article.<\/p>\n

(And the Web? Sheesh. Bad enough as it is. But for someone so easily distracted by half-glimpsed language, the presence of half-glimpsed links<\/em>\u00a0is time-sink disaster waiting to happen.)<\/p>\n

Netherlands<\/em>, vs. Neanderthals<\/em>. There must be a word for this sort of confusion. It seems related to Freudian slips. It also resembles the phenomenon of misheard song lyrics — so-called mondegreens<\/a>, like “Round John Virgin” for “’round yon virgin” and “Crimea River” for “Cry me a river.” And I can’t be the only one it happens to.<\/p>\n

We need a word for it, though.<\/p>\n

Nominees? The best I’ve come up with so far would be used in a sentence something like this: I saw a great Dutch caveman<\/strong> the other day<\/em>…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I’m in bed last night, reading a little bit (as is customary) before shutting out the light. I finish one article and move to the next. The title of this new article is “Sleeping with the Enemy”; and the subtitle, “What happened between the Netherlands and us?” The Netherlands?\u00a0I wonder. An enemy? Are we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,247,50,36],"tags":[459,2533],"class_list":{"0":"post-8270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-language-writing_cat","9":"category-reading","10":"tag-the-new-yorker","11":"tag-mondegreens","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-29o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}