She Hits Everybody

It may pain a writer and confirmed word-nerd to say so, but reading English — as opposed to hearing it, say on TV — will sometimes put a beginning ESL student at a disadvantage, at least when it comes to pronunciation. If it is read more often than it is heard, the word juice might be pronounced “joo-ees,” the word Tuesday might be pronounced “twes-day”; the word built, “bwilt”; the word team, “tee-ahm.” These are honest mistakes. (They may even recall the mnemonic devices you used for spelling tests in grade school.) The student is simply pronouncing the word according to the way it looks.

Just the reverse used to happen in Freshman Comp back home. In Freshman Comp my students would frequently spell words according to how they had heard them. To offer just a few memorable examples from a batch of Othello essays:

Roderigo puts Desdemona up on a pedal stool.

Emilia is a real pre-madonna.

Being around Iago is like being in a mind field.

If you don’t make a habit of reading books, and very few of my Freshman Comp students did, then you will write what you (think you) have heard. Take “pedal stool.” The word “pedestal” just isn’t part of your average IM chat. But if you’ve heard the word “pedestal” on television — maybe in the context of a failed relationship in a dramatic series—then maybe you will imagine some kind of device that involves pedals and stools, a pedal stool, onto which a love interest may be placed (the stool) and subsequently raised to great, unattainable heights (the pedaling). In a similar fashion, if we think of Othello’s Emilia as a submissive, pre-feminist woman, then “pre-madonna,” as in pre- Madonna “Material Girl” Ciccone, may be said to work. And taking into account Iago’s talents as a master of disguise, then yes, hanging out with him is kind of like being in a field full of minds. Kind of.

Before we get too smug about the orthographic misadventures of the philistines, let He Who Hath Never Confused a Song Lyric cast the first stone. If you’re like me, in your life you have misinterpreted, perhaps publicly, your share of song lyrics. Never having read the lyrics or the title of a particular song, you have sung said song according to how you first heard it.  For most of my adolescence and some of my twenties I sang the song Bed’s Too Big Without You as “Best to be Without You.” Another Police song, Truth Hits Everybody, was, for me, “She Hits Everybody.” When the truth about these two songs finally hit me, I was still singing Tom Petty’s Don’t Do Me Like That as “Don’t Turn the Lights Out.” A therapist might have a field day with these interpretations, it’s true, but the fact is they are embarrassingly off-the-mark — much farther off than pedal stool or pre-Madonna, each of which kind of works in its own peculiar way.

Kind of.

Video: Truth Hits Everybody

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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.