Thursday, June 10, 2010

A brain fooled by itself

Have you ever looked at a word and been convinced it said something else? Recently I borrowed a book from Clyde that was written by Jane Austen and "another lady." (Yes, I know, it sounded sketchy, but although a few things might have varied from Austen's principles, the humorous character descriptions were quite similar) The book was entitled Sandition. Or so I thought. Sandition was the name of the village where almost the entire story took place, therefore it was mentioned quite frequently and I became quite familiar with the name. After reading the book I was talking to Clyde about it (I thought maybe I should at least let him know that I borrowed it, good brother that he is).

"Do you mean Sanditon?" he asked me.

Convinced that he was trying to show off his fancy French pronunciation skills, I replied, "No, I think it's English." Sandition, after all, is pronounced Sandi-SHUN in English and not Sandi-TON. Made sense to me.

It wasn't until later when I picked up the book and looked at it that I read the title accurately for the first time. In plain bold English, it read, "Sanditon."

Eh? Do you mean to tell me that I read an entire 309 page book without once reading the name of the village correctly? Apparently. Even if I might have read it right several times, I think I assumed it was a typo.

I guess it's possible for your brain to believe anything once it's convinced itself.

1 comment:

KMS said...

Well, this is sort of what I did when I looked at Katherine Holscher's Facebook picture and Katherine Knowles' name and tried to figure out why Ben H. was in Katherine K.'s picture. :-)

I also have been spelling Chick-Fil-A without the "c" in "Chick" for years, and only recently discovered my mistake.