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Comment by NiklasMort | Hacker News Reader

Aren't they saying in the beginning "I am freezing cold and my shoes'r off"? I hear lot of phrases and words, must be my brain tricking me.

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Interesting you should "mishear" that part; that entire phrase is actually the name of the song: "Prisencolinensinainciusol."

I wonder what text to speech would "hear" there. Should be similar interpretation as mine.

I like to study languages and this happens to me embarrassingly often. I call it hyperhearing. Overhearing a fragment of speech, I'll mentally force it to be some language I'm studying, only to find out upon hearing more that it's definitely a language I don't know a word of.

My girlfriend likes to listen to French music, and I don't speak French, so I'll sometimes sing along with the words that sound almost like English. She naturally can't do it because all she can hear is the actual French meanings, not the craziness I come up with.

I've also heard that one of the biggest 'tells' of (American?) English is how the 'r' is pronounced with the tongue unnaturally forced into the back of the throat, so when movies try to create invented languages, they tend to avoid that sound, and it makes it sound more foreign or alien. It's also one of the harder sounds for children to learn.

In italy there is "Canzoni Travisate" (Misheard songs) where somebody subtitles parts of english language songs that could sound like an italian. It's hilarious (to italians..) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtFhej8TvAI

I was expecting "l'8 di gennaio"...

I think that's called a 'rohtic' pronunciation (never studied linguistic) and carried over into the American dialect from an older English dialect.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English

Some take it to the next level: https://youtu.be/yqVVv97pKGk

Here you go then, French with fake subtitles in English:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_a256A5RFQ

This is an unknown Indian language:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3wTY00564Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz9pXe4PbRQ

Dutch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucB84k0G3EU

Korean, at least mostly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5ZfW1XzAgA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvASlcUuCZI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN_E6HCuE5A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHf1bKw_ftI

Possibly Chinese:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK2gdO31pYs

Japanese:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwrqzGBNvGY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt6RuccJdAo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcdYbEangV4

Seems like a Germanic or Slavic language:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRIn_60Ei6I

Dutch pronounces <r> in the same way in some contexts (before another consonant or at the end of words) and the first time you hear it you might have a moment of confusion, thinking people are speaking English but you just can't understand it for some reason.

The official term is mondegreen

There's a classic Peter Kay clip on youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ukn2YT5jeM - which exploits how succeptible we are to suggestion when it comes to mondegreens.

Warning: Kay has a strong Northern English accent and heavily uses local idioms so I hope the humor isn't lost on an international audience.

Definitively not lost, thanks for the hilarity!

Actually Peter Kays accent is not that strong like wise Jasper Carrots Birmingham accent is not the full Yam Yam "black country" dialect. BTW black country refers to the mines in the rural areas near Birmingham and not to race.

And I wont mention the accents in peaky blinders :-)

It's called a Mondegreen [1] in English, where a foreign language (or nonsense language in this case) is interpreted by your brain to be some meaningful sentence in your (usually) native language.

In Dutch the phenomenon is known nowadays as a "Mamma Appelsapje" (a "Mommy Apple Juice"), because the Michael Jackson song "Wanna be starting something" contains

> mama say mama sa mama coosa

Which sounds to Dutch speakers like

> mama say mama sa mamma appelsap

Another one is Chumbawamba - Tubthumping, where

> You're never gonna keep me down

Sounds like

> Jullie hebben nog niet betaald

Which means "You haven't paid yet"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen

That happens to me when I hear people talking in Dutch for some reason my brain tells me they are speaking a weird version English.

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