The Art of Mispronunciation

In Prime Minister's Questions on January 19, the SNP leader, Ian Blackford, mispronounced the word haemorrhaging as “hae-ma-ge-ring” instead of “hae-ma-re-ging”.

- Amanda Cole Postdoctoral Research Fellow Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex Connor Youngberg Lecturer, Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex Faith Chiu Lecturer, Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex

To be fair to Blackford, this is actually a surprisingly common slip of the tongue, and his meaning was perfectly clear. But why did those two syllables switch places like that? And why are there other words that people seem to slip up on, sometimes with humorous effect?

Blackford’s trip over the word “haemorrhaging” is a common process observed by linguists where whole syllables, or parts of them, can be swapped. This process is called metathesis by linguists.

This is particularly common when a person is speaking quickly or under pressure. Of course, public speaking in front of your political peers and rivals on national broadcast TV is the perfect environment for this.

WHAT HAPPENED HERE?

In English, syllable swapping commonly happens when parts of different words change places. For example, a person might say: “I have a half-warmed fish in my mind” for “half-formed wish”. This is known as a Spoonerism, after the 19th-century clergyman and academic William Archibald Spooner, whose nervous habit of transposing syllables earned him his place in the history of linguistics.

Swapping of sounds is more common than it might seem. Consonant swapping as in “hae-ma-ge-ring” is found in many languages, such as Tagalog in the Philippines, Amharic in Ethiopia and Quechua in parts of South America. It’s also something that is played on in language games and jokes. Shel Silverstein’s poetry book “Runny Babbit” is a great example of playful syllable swapping for comical effect.

FREUDIAN SLIP OR SIMPLE MISTAKE?