There’s this test I do with kids at school. It tests some obscure synapse junction deep within our reading brain.
Strangest of all the odd subtests, designed to pinpoint outrageously specific reading skills, is a test which fires spoonerisms at a child like Cromwell might have fired muskets.
The opening example will give you a feel for it: small sprog is asked to swap the beginnings of words. So if I say King John, my small charge must search within their minds for the spooneristic reverse: Jing Kohn.
It is a piece of gymnastics which takes mental muscle. Surely the man who gave the spoonerism its name must have been fearsome indeed.
Apparently not: William Archibald Spooner was an integral part of the life of New College, Oxford, in the second half of the nineteenth century. He lectured on ancient history, divinity and philosophy: and undergraduates flocked to his lectures. Not always, alas, for their content.
He inadvertently swapped consonants, vowels, bits of words, with comic results. I must rely on apocrypha for examples: I’m not sure how many of these are true, and how many are, as Spooner said, just a half warmed fish -or rather, a half-formed wish.
The Lord was transformed from a loving shepherd to a shoving leopard. It was kisstomary to cuss the bride. Wanting to enquire whether the Dean was free, he asked “Is the bean dizzy?” and rather than a crushing blow, he is said to have alleged that one unfortunate soul was killed by a blushing cow.
As his lecture theatre filled up, one legend relates that he informed the crowd: “You haven’t come for my lecture, you just want to hear one of those…things.”
Reversals were not always so immediate, the Oxford fairy tales meander on. One day he got up into the pulpit and delivered an entire sermon about St Paul, referring to him as Aristotle. He finished, descended from the pulpit, and then got up again and told the gathered throng: “Did I say Aristotle? I meant St Paul.”
The brain is a wondrous entity, complex beyond our wildest imaginings. Tonight I experienced a spoonerism of my own: one fit for the 21st century.
I visited a blog about six months ago. I remember nothing about its author other than she was a marketing bod with a social media bias, and her blog was a podium for cybersermons on her specialities.
She wrote a long, involved hymn in praise of hash tags: how they could be used to promote, to network, to improve.
But she never actually said what one was, or indeed where one used them.
I posted a question enquiring what a hashtag was. She did not compute. The question was just too banal to make any sense to her. I never went back, but I never forgot hashtags either.
My problem was, I never ‘got’ Twitter. So many shortforms; each with a code. It was like some brotherhood from another world, a delighted invention of the chattering classes: chatterchatterchatter RTchatterchatter@chatterchatterchatterFF etcetera, etcerera.
Like white noise on a radio.
Then came the Huff Post. Bloggers on the Huff Post don’t have three followers and tweets about how much homework their daughter has. They have thousands of Twitter disciples and each tweet is a pithy chuckle opportunity or concentrated snatch of seductive trivia.
I looked at the Twitter stream at the foot of my first Huff contribution and blanched.
That was the start of a steep learning curve: how to get followers fast, how to tweet with a modicum of credibility: and how to handle the hashtag.
It may resemble the first piggie’s house but it can open great monolithic doors. You have no idea.
Hashtags take you to another place. They are a signpost to somewhere. So you can write your clever little observation on life and then, straight after, you use the hashtag and a label, and your tweet will travel to where everyone else is writing about the same thing.
During New York’s hurricane experience you could go to #katia and watch New Yorkers tweeting from their apartments as the cloud loomed over the city. Zip to #royalwedding and disappear underneath the 140-character observations of a globe caught up in a fairytale. Jane Austen fans might check out #austenesque, or #Janeausten, or even #colinfirth.
Mind-boggling, really, because these are not geographical places but realms of the mind.
Tonight my tired mind turned the hash tag inside out to produce a Tash Hag.
Which is what I can see myself becoming: a Russian Style virtual Baba Yaga, obsessed with perfection in just 140 characters. Veering in and out of the chattering classes in my mortar, wielding a pestle, plundering new subjects and then leaving as swiftly as I came.
Move aside, Twitterati: here comes the Tash Hag.
Kate Shrewsday 
TashHag. What a great screen name for a female someone. If I weren’t already so deeply committed to Tied Pype, I might adopt it. I do envy your understanding of the Twitterverse. I’m just barely acquainted with the niceties, since I don’t routinely use a cell phone. I do it all from my computer. Other than a very brief list on my Twitter home page, I’ve no idea where people look to find out what hash tags, if any, are in general use for a particular topic.
PiedType, what a coincidence! I was just over at yours investigating S.A.L.A.H.I! You google the name and then hash tags and usually a little twitter guide to the right tags pops up on google. Quite cool.
It took a seed change to get blogging, Kate!
This has me bewildered!
Dad
😀 Best to sit his one out, Dad. Although if you ever need a tutorial….
Writing in just 140 characters is something I may never be able to do. Good for you, Kate, for giving it a whirl.
On to spoonerisms. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You have explained me to perfection. Yesterday, I told my sister that we went in Dunkin’ Donuts for a car. The laughter on the other end of the phone was cruel. Just cruel. I will get her big time for it. I knew that what I had said was that we went in the car to Dunkin’ Donuts. Sigh. I’m off to lap sweaters.
You may console yourself, Penny, with the thought that you would have attracted packed lecture theatres in nineteenth century Oxford 😀
So that’s what it’s for 🙂 thanks my friend, I learn something new on your blog every day!
Bandsmoke, thanks for your company out there in the Twittersphere. I do love our chats 😀
Glad you are back on form Kate. I could never cope with any of these things, I don’t even understand what they are about. I stopped using my Facebook, because I couldn’t understand the youngsters jargon. I will have to sit this one out, like your Dad.
I know precisely how you feel, Rosemary, because I just didn’t fathom it for so long. Duress was the only thing that could induce me to start…
The spoonerism of it all is the vanilla icing on the cake!
😀 You’re wrot nong there, Bandsmoke.
Spooner is a hero of mine along with Mrs Maloprop, as I sometimes spoonerise or malaprop myself.( Once in an English lesson which nearly got me into trouble, until our lovely English teacher realised I had made an honest mistake!)
One of my friend’s once substituted the word ‘masturbate’ for ‘masticate’ which had hilarious results…well after the event, in the retelling any way…she was on an important consultants ward round at the time!
Apparently Spooner said ‘My Queer Dean’ instead of ‘My Dear Quee’ at a dinner at one time.
Poor man 😀 It must have been so disconcerting to have whole dinner halls full of people suddenly burst out laughing in the middle of what you say…
Spoonerism? I thought this twisted tonguer was a gelderly oman fumble!
LOL….
My parents called me Mrs. Malaprop, much to my shame!
And I still don’t know what tash hags are but they could fall into “trash bags” quite handily.
AND somehow, your post relates to my recent experience. In a restaurant, I overheard someone reading a report from the newspaper which suggested that You tube, Twitter and Facebook were all going to merge under Google’s corporation. The cook yelled across the room, ” And it will be called You Twit Face!”
Sorry to jump in here, Deborah, but this is hilarious! A real belly laugh for the evening! Thanks…
I agree with Selena. I am still laughing.
Ditto . . . or since I’m the third in line . . . Twitto!
Bwahahaha, brilliant.
A friend and local comedian recently joined Twitter and tweeted “My wife asked me to FF her. Turns out I was wrong to get excited; it’s a Twitter thing …”
😀 Very funny. I’ll be first in line to join….
#belly laugh 😀
😀
I have been twittering/tweeting/making noise practically since the site launched. My blog post today will not compute for an English person, as I am complaining about a Tex-Mex food chain in the U.S. and poor customer service. (I never had poor customer service on any trip to England………) However, I tweeted a link to the post this afternoon, with the teaser of why I would never eat at said restaurant again, and the thing exploded. The corporate office responded to me on Twitter and begged me to send my complaints to a private e-mail address.
I think Twitter is great for breaking news and complaining about businesses. Because I was on there at the beginning, I use tash hags all the time. I made some of my closest friends there, people I adore and see all the time in person today. And, I think the whole platform is pretty much useless noise other than the uses highlighted above. Because I am trying to get an agent for my novel, I have been told I have to have 20,000 followers. Maybe I should call myself a #trashhag (r intentional) and beg people to tune in to the things I barely say. 🙂
Great post.
Gracious! So now Twitter has become a prerequisite for publishing a novel! I read your recent post on you recent meet with Twitter friends- it’s the first proof for me that Twitter has a bit of warmth to it. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me but the English seem set on being clever when they tweet. Gets in the way a bit. As if even something inconsequential should have a grand point. However, that’s how we get followers…
I’ll see you at #trashhag, Andra 😀
Not being into twitter, I can’t follow the hashtags bit, but I’m up on spoonerisms as my husband and I use them all the time, mostly unconsciously. Sometimes though, if I’ve not eaten for a long time and I have a blood-sugar drop, I won’t know what the hell he’s talking about. So maybe that obscure synapse function is a disfunction then.
Yow are hoo, why the bay?
😀 Thine, fanks, Val, and lovely to hear from you. All ready for a Welsh Autumn?
In college, I would have attended Spooner’s lectures for the “blushing crows” for sure.
Thanks, Kate.
They must have been wonderful lectures to attend, Nancy 🙂
Great learned background for next time my wife protests at my use of “Let’s have chish and fips for tea tonight.”
And I really must look into the use of hash tags.
Pondering Wilgrim!
I’m afraid it I start to tweet (or it it twit?) that I may become addicted.
My pet spoonerism that pops out when I’m not expecting it is to suggest we do something in one swell foop. Seldom fails to confuse others and I don’t even notice I said it.
Alright then! I have deemed you the leader of the hash tag pack! I have only recently thought that perhaps, just perhaps I might try to enter this sphere soon. It intimidates me beyond anything in recent cyber-communication, and I don’t understand it at all…but learning is fun, and you definitely inspire! Children sometimes misspeak in a way that computes as spoonerisms…maybe I’ll start a list. Very fun, Kate. Debra
Brilliant post. I absolutely dig the Shel Silverstein book, Runny Babbit! As for twitter, my friend, I use tweetdeck and oft find fun in doing a ‘tashhag’ column if there is a sporting event going on. Wow, amazing to watch it fly ~
It is: it’s so fast paced. But fun 🙂
Great post. I love Spoonerisms. I didn’t undserstand this bit:
As his lecture theatre filled up, one legend relates that he informed the crowd: ”You haven’t come for my lecture, you just want to hear one of those…things.”
I can’t work out what I’m missing; please help.
Would you mind giving us a lecture on Twitter some day? There were some useful tips here today.
I think he meant his own spoonerisms, Tilly 🙂
I think if I tried a twitter lecture I might get lynched! However, I’m always on hand on Twitter.I thought you got the hashtag thing very quickly indeed!!
I’m not sure I will ever ‘tweet’… or should that be ‘twit’? When would I do it for a start? And why? (except of course if I wanted to publish a novel – see Andra above) I have enough trouble finding time to blog and visit. *bewildered* (or perhaps just old)
Nope, probably just sane…I love pace, and speed, and lots of tiny nuggets of information from all over at high velocity. I learn a lot about a lot fast and it suits me. But living where you live, I’d probably not tweet either…
Kate, you may enjoy the writing here:
http://janh1.wordpress.com/
Pseu, I went, I read, I did 🙂 Left a comment. What a lovely writer!
Absolutely blind mogging. That’s how I read your words above!
I vote for the tash hag.
Hurrah! Another recruit 😀
I’m OK with the Tash Hags but I don’t really use them very often. Possibly due to the fact that I don’t use my Twitter account very often either, but I’m OK with them. I love spoonerisms however, but being such a dool cude I don’t use them often, either!
Great post Kate! 😀
Spoonerisms are always funny when someone else says them, Tom 🙂 Spooner always felt awkward about his own.
Shame you don’t tweet much Tom: Twitter doesn’t have enough writers like you around. But it’s a high maintenance business…
I’m afraid the joy of tweeting is all a big mystery to me, Kate, but I do love a good spoonerism 🙂
And Spooner came up with some crackers, BB 🙂
Love the story about the Paint Saul (though doesn’t really work with him cos wasn’t he Saul before he was Paul?) and Aristotle lecture. I occasionally relay gossip in the same way – only to have to correct the most important bit at the end – the gaping mouths close when listeners realise that so-and-so isn’t shagging someone else after all etc.
😀 Hi again Paul, never forgotten your seaweed advice. I love your gossip tactics, must take notes.
Jesus. Joseph, and JehoshaFAT…and I am too, the only spoona-R-hythyms I know is the different chime octaves my spoon makes as the Ice Cream Dish gets emptier..
God Bless You
paul
😀 My favourite kind of spoon, Paul.