While English is the most widely spoken language worldwide, it is also full of weird quirks that even native speakers have a hard time figuring out. Some words are spelled the same but pronounced differently, others sound alike yet have completely separate meanings — the list goes on and on.
With so many twists and turns, there’s bound to be some miscommunication, and it often comes from people mishearing things. However, if they're quick-witted, they could avoid embarrassing themselves. But if they're not, their slip-ups might end up online. And that’s exactly what this post is all about.
Recently, Twitter user Andy van Slyke who goes by the handle @im_all_id kicked off a hilarious thread by explaining her flirting blunder. Thousands of people joined in to share funny mishaps of how they misunderstood one another in conversations. We at Bored Panda selected some of the best tweets from the thread, all for your entertainment. So have a look at them right below, upvote the ones that made you laugh, and be sure to share your own stories with us in the comments!
Twitter user Andy van Slyke recently tweeted about her flirting blunder and kicked off a hilarious thread full of stories about how people misheard words in conversations
Image credits: im_all_id
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Audiologist Dr. Victoria Zambrano stated that it's not uncommon to hear words incorrectly. She explained that hearing involves not only our ears but also our brain. "First, sound waves need to be able to reach our brain through the physical act of hearing. From there, the brain uses the information that has reached it to interpret sound and give it meaning."
When we sometimes mishear certain words, it could be due to a hearing loss condition. Our brain might not receive all the signals it needs to fully understand the incoming language. "To take a page from Dr. Seuss, differentiating words like 'here' from 'there' or 'house' from 'mouse' becomes difficult, if not plain impossible," Zambrano explained.
However, misunderstanding words can result in funny accidents, such as the ones you see in this list. They often happen because we don't properly listen or simply hear what we want to hear. According to science journalist Ingrid Wickelgren, the act of listening might seem simple enough, but the situation is usually far more complicated in the real world.
"First, to mentally process the message, the person to whom you are speaking has to be paying attention. Not only may external distractions … divert their minds away from the words, but their own thoughts might also similarly lead them astray. Lost in thought, they are just not hearing you," she wrote.
You see, language processing takes a fair amount of thinking. "We use a short-term mental sketch pad, so-called working memory, to hold each word and its meaning in mind long enough to combine it with others," so if the meaning of the words is obscure, the task gets harder.
Moreover, people often fail to express themselves clearly. They might forget to let the listener know about important context, mumble their words, or simply choose the wrong expression. So "even when the other person's brain is ready to listen, the information they need from a speaker is often not all there."
While mishearing things in everyday conversations is quite common, song lyrics take it to a whole other level. How many times did you sing out loud at the top of your lungs to your favorite song only to find out you completely missed the right words? If you can’t keep track of the count, don’t worry, you’re not the only one.
These mishaps are often referred to as mondegreens — a word or phrase that results from mishearing or misinterpreting a statement or song lyric. And it's no surprise that these slip-ups are always funny, leaving people surprised they’ve been wrong this whole time. For example, singing "Hold me closer Tony Danza" when the correct lyrics by Elton John are "Hold me closer tiny dancer". Or believing Queen wrote "Saving his life from this warm sausage tea" when it’s in fact "Spare him his life from this monstrosity".
What tricks did he show you? Like how to restring a guitar using your shoelaces or something?
"I can even do the splits!" *two hours later* "I swear Doc, I was just doing the splits naked and I accidentally landed on it!"
Why didn't he question your litter box response? Maybe he did mean a cat...
The English language is extremely rich in words that simply sound alike which is the perfect ground for such accidents. Also, Dr. Wei Ji Ma, assistant professor of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, found in his lip-reading study that it’s much harder to understand what people are saying or singing when they’re not looking at a person's face.
"Understanding speech can be difficult, especially when it’s noisy," Ma told NBC News. "We found that this process can be helped a lot by looking at the speaker’s face. If you have only sound information, you will sometimes make mistakes. But if you also have the visual information, the brain will combine those two pieces and get a better sense of what’s being said."
I had a similar mishearing because of a thick accent. Spanish teacher was French and one day he asked us to write the sentence "the beaches are nice..." ofc what we all heard was "b*tches" and ofc we were all in stitches. We finally had to explain it to him and he just laughed along with us!
Actually happened to me when I had an ear infection. I asked for a prescription for antibiotics over the phone, and the doctor said he was going to ask me some questions, some of which may seem irrelevant to me. I thought “fair enough” and when he said “which year is it?” I replied: “2021” He said: “WHAT???” And I very confidently replied : “2021. WHY???” And of course he then said: “No. Which ear is it?’
Ma revealed that the study participants got the words right only 10 percent of the time when listening. Seeing a person's lips move improved understanding of the words up to 60 percent. "What seems to be happening with misunderstood song lyrics is that what you hear is not always reliable," the professor said. "It’s noisy, the singer is singing fast, he’s not articulating well or maybe he has an accent. The sound information is uncertain, that’s step one."
While many of the situations you read while scrolling through this list did not involve any noisy surroundings, people still seem to have a tendency to mishear things. Whether they did not listen closely enough or were just a tad distracted, we're sure happy they decided to share their funny tales with everyone online.
Being embarrassed into avoiding skin cancer? I see this as a total win!
This is a common occurrence in my life because I have the lovely sounds of tinnitus serenading my ears because my hearing is in decline. It has made for for interesting and embarrassing situations.
Same team Beth, I didn't realize how def I was until people started wearing masks. I had no idea I was reading lips. In bed I always ask my wife “do you hear that” Tinnitus
Load More Replies...Misheard a coworker asking if I was married [in Spanish, estas casada?], and responded, "yeah, a little" [si, un poquito] because I heard 'are you tired' [estas cansada?]. The look on his face!!!
He was probably thinking “you can do that part time?! Which religion?!”
Load More Replies...I got in trouble in HS due to my accent. I made a comment about something being "corny". Guess which word they thought I said. Thankfully they allowed me to appeal the case (we need more abilities to appeal things in pub school, the whole no-tolerance thing is BS). I've gotten better on my English pronunciations since then. lol
I have been staring at this for 5 minutes and I genuinely cannot think of an accent that would make that a derogatory word unless there's some slur I'm unaware of.
Load More Replies...I was helping a friend cut fire wood at his cabin. After we were all sitting around having a beer when he asked if I pooped. I was like ya... this morning...why do you need to know that??? Then I realized he asked if I WAS pooped.... as in tired. We still laugh at that all the time!
I was walking a dog named Kai, who can be aggressive with other dogs. We went into the street to avoid a man and his dogs, and when Kai got extra naughty and started snarling, I snapped, “Kai!” The man awkwardly said, “Hi,” wondering, I think, why this stranger just yelled an angry hello at him.
Not really on subject of original thread, but dogs. My dad's last late wee poodle was called Dancer. At Christmas he would dress up as Santa for his friends' kids. Just about to get into the car on Christmas Eve the waff ran off. Santa ran around the neighbourhood shouting Dancer, and half the neighbourhood kids thought Father Christmas had lost one of his reindeer.
Load More Replies...This has happened to me before what happened is that a Spanish friend came to a party and at one point we started talking about parents but because of her accent we thought she said parrots, so we asked "can your parrots talk?" She replied "yes? They can speak English and Spanish" so us thinking that she was talking about parrots went "wooooow! That's crazy" it continued like this for a while until we figured it out.
Haha My SIL is Greek and it happens to us quite a lot to misunderstand eachother because of the accent.
Load More Replies...I was hanging up clothes on our balcony, when my neighbour said " Smells nice". I found it a little strange, but I still thanked her. She then continued "Yes, it's already warm enough for all your clothes to dry." I the realised that she was talking of the weather before, and basically told me "It's drying nicely." (In our language, it sounds very similar). So I just thanked her that my clothes were drying 😂🙈
Why is the thing you mishear always more interesting than the thing they actually said?
No idea but you're right Kermit. Oh merde now I'm mishearing with me eyes!
Load More Replies...This one time i loudly answered ‘you too’ to the voice inside my head saying ‘tell the cashier have a nice day’ in front of the cashier who hasn’t said a word.
When i was waitressing in high school at a burger place a customer from Boston asked me for a fawk. I live in a small town in Wisconsin, had never heard the accent before (this is late 90s where videos weren't really online and world a lot smaller). I stared at her for a moment trying to assess whether she was hitting on me, wasn't my type lol. Asked several times and didn't get it til she mimed moving food to mouth. Oh. Fork!! I was ten shades of red that day. What she had ordered wouldn't be eaten with a fork so it wasn't obvious, she had like soup or a hamburger.
And a more recent, a coworker asked me to do something, no clue what it was. I heard "you're a delicious muffin". Paused. "Did you tell me I'm a delicious muffin?" She says no but now i wish i had! Still no idea what the original comment was but now we have an inside joke
Load More Replies...I was walking in Sydney when a young Asian girl approached me and asked "Sucky Lucky?"... i paused while I thought about what she could possibly mean if she wasn't propositioning me. Glad I didn't say anything before she pointed to her map and showed me she was looking for "Circular Quay".
Long, long ago, as I practiced singing my kindergarten graduation song I would sing "Stand up and alebate your chest". My mom, bless her heart never corrected me because she had no idea what I was supposed to be saying until graduation day when everyone else sang "Stand up and elevate your chest". She will be 80 this June 2022.
My dear much missed mum persuaded the milk delivery man we drank "semi skilled" milk.
Load More Replies...Once, a Scottish lady asked me where the "toilet" is and I thought she meant the "tallest" building so I just pointed to the tower 2 or 3 blocks away that really was a spectacle at that time. She looked surprise and repeated the question 1 more time and I was just ahhhh, my bad, sorry. So awkward LOL.
My ex-husband once answered the phone to be asked, "what do you think about cats?" My ex said "Well, I'm really allergic to them." It turned out it was a pollster asking about a political candidate Melinda Katz.
When I met the girl I like, I thought she said, "I'm Alia." As it turns out, she said, "Amalia." I got her name wrong.
I remember that when I was younger, my mom got confused when I said something about Callie (one of my childhood friends) because she thought I was saying "Kelly".
When I was in college, I had a Engineering Graphics prof with a strong Mexican accent. Most of the time it wasn't bad, but sometimes, he would say something and we'd all kind of look at each other, like "what did he say?" One day we were working on a CAD project and he comes up to me and asks me a question. I thought he asked if I "chew" (as in tobacco). Super random question, but ok.. I answered no and he was like ok and walked away. I turned to the girl beside me and asked what she heard. She thought he said "are you jew?" (I guess because of my name maybe, idk). I was like "OH...wait. That's still a weird question to randomly ask." She was like, "yeah I thought that was really weird too." Oh well it was the right answer to either question haha.
A few months ago me and some friends were talking about homecoming and something about cleaning I think, so one of my friends go “I hate dust”. Me being me with a straight face replied “jessica?!” She was like “nope I said dust, are you deaf?” The following day I made another similar mistake talking to that same group of friends
this happens in reverse as well. i work as a cashier and when i asked them "so what you uo to this easter holiday?" they tell me that they going camping. so after transacting monies and receipts, i say "thank you and have a nice (camping) trip!" they always reply:"you too!"
This is a common occurrence in my life because I have the lovely sounds of tinnitus serenading my ears because my hearing is in decline. It has made for for interesting and embarrassing situations.
Same team Beth, I didn't realize how def I was until people started wearing masks. I had no idea I was reading lips. In bed I always ask my wife “do you hear that” Tinnitus
Load More Replies...Misheard a coworker asking if I was married [in Spanish, estas casada?], and responded, "yeah, a little" [si, un poquito] because I heard 'are you tired' [estas cansada?]. The look on his face!!!
He was probably thinking “you can do that part time?! Which religion?!”
Load More Replies...I got in trouble in HS due to my accent. I made a comment about something being "corny". Guess which word they thought I said. Thankfully they allowed me to appeal the case (we need more abilities to appeal things in pub school, the whole no-tolerance thing is BS). I've gotten better on my English pronunciations since then. lol
I have been staring at this for 5 minutes and I genuinely cannot think of an accent that would make that a derogatory word unless there's some slur I'm unaware of.
Load More Replies...I was helping a friend cut fire wood at his cabin. After we were all sitting around having a beer when he asked if I pooped. I was like ya... this morning...why do you need to know that??? Then I realized he asked if I WAS pooped.... as in tired. We still laugh at that all the time!
I was walking a dog named Kai, who can be aggressive with other dogs. We went into the street to avoid a man and his dogs, and when Kai got extra naughty and started snarling, I snapped, “Kai!” The man awkwardly said, “Hi,” wondering, I think, why this stranger just yelled an angry hello at him.
Not really on subject of original thread, but dogs. My dad's last late wee poodle was called Dancer. At Christmas he would dress up as Santa for his friends' kids. Just about to get into the car on Christmas Eve the waff ran off. Santa ran around the neighbourhood shouting Dancer, and half the neighbourhood kids thought Father Christmas had lost one of his reindeer.
Load More Replies...This has happened to me before what happened is that a Spanish friend came to a party and at one point we started talking about parents but because of her accent we thought she said parrots, so we asked "can your parrots talk?" She replied "yes? They can speak English and Spanish" so us thinking that she was talking about parrots went "wooooow! That's crazy" it continued like this for a while until we figured it out.
Haha My SIL is Greek and it happens to us quite a lot to misunderstand eachother because of the accent.
Load More Replies...I was hanging up clothes on our balcony, when my neighbour said " Smells nice". I found it a little strange, but I still thanked her. She then continued "Yes, it's already warm enough for all your clothes to dry." I the realised that she was talking of the weather before, and basically told me "It's drying nicely." (In our language, it sounds very similar). So I just thanked her that my clothes were drying 😂🙈
Why is the thing you mishear always more interesting than the thing they actually said?
No idea but you're right Kermit. Oh merde now I'm mishearing with me eyes!
Load More Replies...This one time i loudly answered ‘you too’ to the voice inside my head saying ‘tell the cashier have a nice day’ in front of the cashier who hasn’t said a word.
When i was waitressing in high school at a burger place a customer from Boston asked me for a fawk. I live in a small town in Wisconsin, had never heard the accent before (this is late 90s where videos weren't really online and world a lot smaller). I stared at her for a moment trying to assess whether she was hitting on me, wasn't my type lol. Asked several times and didn't get it til she mimed moving food to mouth. Oh. Fork!! I was ten shades of red that day. What she had ordered wouldn't be eaten with a fork so it wasn't obvious, she had like soup or a hamburger.
And a more recent, a coworker asked me to do something, no clue what it was. I heard "you're a delicious muffin". Paused. "Did you tell me I'm a delicious muffin?" She says no but now i wish i had! Still no idea what the original comment was but now we have an inside joke
Load More Replies...I was walking in Sydney when a young Asian girl approached me and asked "Sucky Lucky?"... i paused while I thought about what she could possibly mean if she wasn't propositioning me. Glad I didn't say anything before she pointed to her map and showed me she was looking for "Circular Quay".
Long, long ago, as I practiced singing my kindergarten graduation song I would sing "Stand up and alebate your chest". My mom, bless her heart never corrected me because she had no idea what I was supposed to be saying until graduation day when everyone else sang "Stand up and elevate your chest". She will be 80 this June 2022.
My dear much missed mum persuaded the milk delivery man we drank "semi skilled" milk.
Load More Replies...Once, a Scottish lady asked me where the "toilet" is and I thought she meant the "tallest" building so I just pointed to the tower 2 or 3 blocks away that really was a spectacle at that time. She looked surprise and repeated the question 1 more time and I was just ahhhh, my bad, sorry. So awkward LOL.
My ex-husband once answered the phone to be asked, "what do you think about cats?" My ex said "Well, I'm really allergic to them." It turned out it was a pollster asking about a political candidate Melinda Katz.
When I met the girl I like, I thought she said, "I'm Alia." As it turns out, she said, "Amalia." I got her name wrong.
I remember that when I was younger, my mom got confused when I said something about Callie (one of my childhood friends) because she thought I was saying "Kelly".
When I was in college, I had a Engineering Graphics prof with a strong Mexican accent. Most of the time it wasn't bad, but sometimes, he would say something and we'd all kind of look at each other, like "what did he say?" One day we were working on a CAD project and he comes up to me and asks me a question. I thought he asked if I "chew" (as in tobacco). Super random question, but ok.. I answered no and he was like ok and walked away. I turned to the girl beside me and asked what she heard. She thought he said "are you jew?" (I guess because of my name maybe, idk). I was like "OH...wait. That's still a weird question to randomly ask." She was like, "yeah I thought that was really weird too." Oh well it was the right answer to either question haha.
A few months ago me and some friends were talking about homecoming and something about cleaning I think, so one of my friends go “I hate dust”. Me being me with a straight face replied “jessica?!” She was like “nope I said dust, are you deaf?” The following day I made another similar mistake talking to that same group of friends
this happens in reverse as well. i work as a cashier and when i asked them "so what you uo to this easter holiday?" they tell me that they going camping. so after transacting monies and receipts, i say "thank you and have a nice (camping) trip!" they always reply:"you too!"