Walk like a dog 

Walk like dog, if you wish.

We've all done it. We all have it. We all have a song that despite knowing the lyrics, we still hear them incorrectly, usually to humorous effect. The Bruce Springsteen song, Blinded by the Light, in its original version has the curious lyric, "cut loose like a deuce, another runner in the night." The "deuce" refers to a nickname for original V8 engines or something. Even in that explanation, I wouldn't have understood it. Now listen to the Manfred Mann version, wherein an English vocalist evoking an American accent sings something that sounds more like "revved up like a douche" and you have added confusion. The fact that this version was played constantly on the radio of my youth only made my brothers and I even more confounded by it. The more you heard it, the more it confirmed your suspicion of it. More commonly, listeners to Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze, often wondered if the singer was excusing themselves to either "Kiss this guy" or "Kiss the sky"? A friend of my brother's was sure the chorus the 1981 Kim Carnes' hit "Bette Davis Eyes", came through our fuzzy dashboard speakers as "She's got thirty days inside", instead of "She's got Bette Davis eyes." To be honest, the misheard lyrics sound as improbable as the actual ones. There are dozens and dozens of other examples.

In 1954, writer Sylvia Wright gave this phenomenon the name, “mondegreen”. As a child she claimed to have misheard a line of poetry as:
"Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl Amurray,
And Lady Mondegreen."

The actual verse is, "They hae slain the Earl o' Moray / And laid him on the green." Thus "Mondegreen" was, if not created there and then, at least given a name.

It's been years since these ears have heard Blinded by the Light, Purple Haze or Betty Davis Eyes yet a Mondegreen I hear all the time comes from the blurry sound system and chirpy alert courtesy of the Yonge-Dundas intersection. This intersection is one of only two or three in Toronto known as a "scramble crossing". Due to the huge numbers of pedestrians crossing east-west and north-south, one of the phases of the traffic signals is red for all the lights to allow pedestrians to cross in any direction. It's also one of the few intersections with a recorded voice letting you know that you can cross however you like but for the life of me, all I ever heard, every time was that disembodied voice saying, "Walk like a dog in all directions." What did it even mean to, "walk like a dog"? On all fours? Or like a dog walking on its hind legs? And in "all directions"? So, like a drunken dog hopping around on its hind legs?? It is always a moment of unintended hilarity to me.

Clearly, I knew it was wrong, but no matter how closely I listened, I could never hear anything else, which is kind of how your brain works. It's like the initially misheard sound is sort of imprinted and burned into your mind like a shortcut on your mobile device. If that's the first thing you heard, the synapse connection is made and that's it. That shortcut becomes hardwired and difficult to overcome. This effect is even more pronounced for non-native speakers. I've definitely heard people who have funny stories of an expression they could never understand in the language they were learning. Like hearing Quebecers preface sentences with what sounds like "moi-sha" when they are really saying "moi, je…" but as an Anglo you may have been taught to say "pour moi" instead. Then it becomes really hard to break the mistake.

What is the crossing signal actually saying at Yonge-Dundas?
“Walk Sign is on for all crossings." I still hear the word "dog" in there, where "on" is really being said, and I try to repeat it as much as I can, but it's very hard for my brain to overcome what my ears are telling me. A small improvement in the recording might simply be changing the message to, "THE walk SIGNAL is on, [tiny pause] for all DIRECTIONS." but I'm sure that would only satisfy me and no one else and I would miss out on a personal inside joke. Let's face it, a joke that takes place only in your head alone, is very personal and very inside.