In the interests of accuracy I really should have named this post 'Getting Things Very Wrong' but it would have been a very different article altogether, so I shall stick to the more light-hearted and hopefully less legally compromising 'Getting Things a Bit Wrong'.
We shall start with those masters of the trade, small children. As they begin on that wonderful adventure which is learning to communicate, they often get things slightly skewed. When Bryn was very small, probably about 2, he was getting quite agitated in the bath asking me to get a flannel as he had 'a whack' in his ear. A whack, I thought, immediately concerned (see post on Worrying). Had he been hit at nursery or fallen over and injured himself? He didn't appear to be in any discomfort though so I continued my investigations and eventually realised that in his toddler logic 'A whack' was the singular form of 'wax'.
More recently I was looking after (and I use that term very loosely) my 5year old nephew. He was out in the garden with my son playing with the football. When I dragged myself away from Jeremy Kyle and went to check on them he came running up to me and said "Auntie Sian. we've been playing sleepy puppies". For those of you not familiar with the world of young boys he meant 'keepy uppies'.
Getting things wrong, however, is not the sole preserve of the young, and modern technology is often to blame for glaring errors. On-line translation tools are the worst offenders, but I have enough material there for a separate post, so you'll have to wait. One of my own favourite auto-correct errors appeared on a worksheet I had produced for my pupils. I am sure year 10 will never forget the day they learnt how to ask directions in French to the 'pubic gardens'.
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