This brought me swiftly to the view it was clearly time for another language column.
English is not an easy language to learn or master but kids’ attempts at difficult words can at least be humorous. Some I have heard are, to my mind, improvements on the originals but I’ll leave those until the end — just before the other word on the sign.
Generally, kids’ bloopers are of this sort: not nessa celery (not necessarily). The child knows the word celery and hears it in this different phrase and decides to try it. No matter that necessity and celery are not at all related.
I understand because I remember doing the same as a child. I’ve told you before that I used to sing the national anthem with exemplary gusto: “In the bombs of love we meet.” That’s what I heard so that’s what I sang.
Malapropisms have been causing giggles for centuries, whether they have been intentional to create humour (Mrs Malaprop in the 1775 play, The Rivals) or accidental (like my bombs of love) but still humorous.
Mrs Malaprop gave advice to “illiterate him quite from your memory” and called someone else “the very pineapple of politeness” (Obliterate and pinnacle in case you were away from school that day).
A much later example came from British comedian Ronnie Barker in his mispronunciation sketch: “I’m squeaking to you tonight, once again, as the chairman for the Loyal Society for the Promention of Pismronunciation, a society formed to help people who can’t say their worms correctly. I, myself, often use the wrong worms, and that is why I was erected charming of the society.”
A good example of the accidental kind came from former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who was fittingly reported as hitting a bum note when he said, “No one, however smart, however well-educated, however experienced … is the suppository of all wisdom”.
But now it’s time to reveal the two I feel were improvements on the originals. These were both from the mouth of the same child, my memory puts at about 6 or 7. And you’ll need to take your mind back a few decades when built-in waste disposal units were quite common but in their infancy. Their real name might have been Insinkerators.
They were certainly quite fierce and you wouldn’t have wanted to let your fingers anywhere near their inner workings. And they made quite the noise (though modern ones might be rather quieter).
The child, who was helping to clear the first course from the table, asked, “Shall I put these bits straight into the grumbly-muncher?”
That name has it all (assonance, onomatopoeia, personification) and I say it’s bang on.
His other phrase was to describe a food item. We were eating Indian (mild) that night and the meal featured poppadoms/papadams/poppadums. Partway into the meal he asked whether someone would pass him the chipply croccodams. He’d nailed another one.
I would say that, once he hit high school, he scooped the creative writing awards.
It only remains to wish all readers and newspaper staff a very merry festive season. I will reappear in a couple of weeks. Have a real cracker and may the jokes be as lame as ever.
The word underneath gardening implements was ... tadpoles.
