Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English
Ly Thi Ngoc Linh
Running head: Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English
Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English:
A Contrastive Analysis
Student: Ly Thi Ngoc Linh – 4A08
Lecturer: NGUYEN NGOC VU
December 2011
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Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English
Ly Thi Ngoc Linh
Have you read “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” of The Bothers Grimm – Jacob and Wilhelm
Grimm? These stories are very famous around the world and are translated into many
different languages. The people in many ages have a passion for these fairy tales.
However, do you know the stories “The Beeping Sleauty”? Maybe this is the first time
you’ve heard this title, but this is a version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales which was rewritten
by using spoonerism. So, what is spoonerism and how familiar is it with Vietnamese?
In this paper, we will discuss about the definition of spoonerism and how to use in
some language fields.
Spoonerism is derived from an England Reverend - William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930)
– who was Dean and Warden of New College in Oxford. He often unintentionally made the
slips of the tongue that don’t make sense when he said. This Reverend also gave the
dictionary a new entry: spoonerism. Dictionary of Quotation, 2nd edition (1953), quoted his
two famous spoonerisms: "Kinquering congs their titles take", and "You have
deliberately tasted two worms and you can leave Oxford by the town drain."
Spoonerism sometimes creates new phrases with amusing meanings but most of them are
meaningless, they just make fun. Other popular attributions to Dr Spooner are: "a well boiled
icicle"; "a blushing crow"; "a half-warmed fish"; "our shoving leopard"; "our queer old Dean",
etc. However, a recent study indicates that Spooner’s spoonerisms were very carefully
planned- high level humor rather than unintentional error. We can easily see this in this
following example:
You’ve missed my history lectures  You’ve hissed my mystery lectures.
Today, there are so many different definitions for spoonerism. Some people think spoonerism
is a creative, funny “word play” or “form of humor” or “speech error” whereas others think it is
an “intentional, involuntary deviation”. Typically, Donal G. Mackay consider it as (MAckay,
1970, Vol.8, pp. 323)(Neuropsychologia, 1970, Vol. 8, pp.323) and Sturtevent also defines
this “speech error” as “an unintentional linguistic innovation” (1947:38). Contrary to above
opinions, Bommer & Laver’s definition is “a slip of the tounge…is an involuntary deviation in
performance from the speaker’s current phonological, grammatical or lexical intention”
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Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English
Ly Thi Ngoc Linh
Accademically, The Macmilland Dictionary defines spoonerism as
“A mistake in speaking in which someone pronounces some sounds or parts of
words in the wrong order and makes a funny change in meaning. For example,
someone might say ‘know your blows’ instead of ‘blow your nose’”.
In other way, spoonerism is analyzed as a part of pun – a kind of figure speech which is
linguistically understood “the transposition of the initial consonants or consonant clusters of a
pair of words, often resulting in an amusing ambiguity of meaning”.
English spoonerism was begun in the early 20th century while Vietnamese spoonrism had a
longer history. People don’t know when spoonerism became popular in Vietnam. In the folk
songs, there are many interesting and creative kinds of spoonerisms such as:
Cam sành nhỏ lá thanh ương
Ngọt mật thanh đường nhắm lớ bớ anh
Thanh ương là tuổi mong chờ
Một mai nhái lặn chà quơ, quơ chà
Or:
Con cá đối nằm trên cối đá
Mèo đuôi cụt nằm mút đuôi kèo
Anh mà đối được, dẫu nghèo cũng ưng.
Con mỏ kiến đậu trong miếng cỏ
Chim vàng lông đáp dựa vồng lang
Anh đà đối đặng, e nàng vong ngôn.
Just with the short and superficial definitions, it seems to be that spoonerism is quite difficult
to master for many people. Why don’t we try to find out its structure and purposes and some
typical examples in different language fields?
Spoonerism is also appeared in many languages like French, Germany, Dutch, etc but it’s
really abundant in English and especially in Vietnamese. It is because that
English is a fertile soil for spoonerisms because our language has more than three
times as many words as any other – 616,500 and growing at 450 a year.
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Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English
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Consequently, there's a greater chance that any accidental transposition of letters or
syllables will produce rhyming substitutes that still make sense – sort of. (Richard
Lederer)
However, considering in the profusion and copiousness of language, Vietnamese have many
chances to create spoonerism. First of all, the sepertion between syllables is more clearly (for
example, tôi is devided into two parts, the first part – beginning the word t – is consonant and
the second part – ôi – is vowel. The Vietnamese words always agree with this order). The
second advantage is that most of the consonants can meaningfully combine with any other
vowels and accents (for example, according to Nguyen Khuyen, chày đứng – đừng cháy.
Obviously, ch easily combines not only ay or ưng but also accute accent ( / ) or grave
accent ( \ ) to create the meaningful words). Many other languages don’t meet two conditions,
so it is impossible or hard to form spoonerism. Here are some other instances showing that
consonants can exchange together to create new words: Hoảng chưa  chửa hoang, đấu
tranh  tránh đâu  đánh trâu, vấn đề đầu tiên là tiền đâu, đơn giản như đang giỡn and
so on.
Though there are lots of differences in language aspect such as grammar, phonology,
typology and vocabulary between English and Vietnamese, the forms of spoonerism in both
languages accidentally coincide. It’s accent that makes Vietnamese spoonerism more
interesting and various than the others. In the article “Nói lái đặc thù của Tiếng Việt” posted
in Tuổi Trẻ Việt Nam on March 5th, 2011, its author considers that one Vietnamese words
consist three parts: consonant, vowel and accent. Spoonerism is made up if one or two in
three parts are reversed together. In that ways, we have six ways to compose spoonerism in
total.
Reverse vowels: (only vowels change, consonants and accents still keep the original
position)
Con ngựa  cưa ngọn
Đấu tranh  đánh trâu
Cái thân  cấn thai
Reverse consonants: (consonants reverse, other factors have no change)
Thay đổi  đay thổi
Reverse accents: (change the position of accents)
Thay đổi  thảy đôi
Reverse consonants and vowels: (both consonants and vowel reverse)
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Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English
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Đầu tiên  tiền đâu
Đấu tranh  tránh đâu
Reverse consonants and accents:
Lâu đài  đầu lai
Thay đổi  đảy thôi
Reverse vowels and accents:
Cối đá  cá đối
Thay đổi  thổi đay
Obviously, not every word can be spoonerized in six ways. To Vietnamese people, the first
and fourth ones are more popular. About the phonetic aspect, the structure with one initial
consonant with one vowel in one word is very useful for composing the new intersting
spoonerisms. Although English structure is quite different from Vietnamese, the ways to
spoonerize between two languages are equivalent.
However, one word in English is often constructed by one or more than one syllables, so
sounds within a word may be transposed to form spoonerism too, as in for poani (piano),
crinimal (criminal) or cerely (celery) . According to Donal G. Mackay within-word spoonerism
has a great chance to occur.
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Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English
Ly Thi Ngoc Linh
The expecetd frequencies plotted in this Figure 1 and 2 show that Spoonerism occurred in
adjacent syllables with greater than chance probability, and in more distant syllables with less
than chance probability. Therefore, Spoonerism is easily happened if the distance withinword or between-word is close enough. Meanwhile, Michael Erard pointed out the common
rule for Spoonerism in English:
"Spoonerisms all work the same way: the reversed sounds come from the
beginnings of the words, rarely at the ends, and very often from the syllable that
carries the stress. . .”
(Michael Erard, Um . . .: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They
Mean. Pantheon, 2007)
Victoria Fromkin, a famous researcher who considers spoonerism as a speech “error”. She
states that: “The segments constituting each syllable must have sequential ordering, so that
only initial consonants, vowels, and final consonants may interchange, if and only if the
transpositions are keeping with the phonological rules of language” (Fromkin 1971). She also
indicates that, when consonants interchange, they can change the spellings but still keep the
original sounds such as sphinx in the moonlight  minx in the spoonlight
In Spooner’s age, people could think spoonerism just a speech-error which makes other
laugh. Up to now, spoonerism has proved that it is not only used for making fun but for
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Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English
Ly Thi Ngoc Linh
criticising the negative social problems or challenging others or creating new surprising and
interesting words. Nowadays, spoonerism is popular both formality and informality in many
typical language fields: daily life, literature, folk songs and riddles…
First of all, we can easily see spoonerism in our daily life. This kind is just for fun because of
its fascination and excitement. People in many ages from children to adults can spoonerise.
Spoonerism is considered “normal speech error” (Landi) so its frequency in daily
conversations is high. Here are some examples:
Keep a tape  teep a cape
The zipper is narrow  the nipper is zarrow
With this ring I do wed  with this wing I do red
In the past few weeks  in the fast pew weeks
Or in the dialogue where spoonerism occurs frequently and unintentionally
• Presenter: And what is your next project?
Hamrag Yatlerot: Ring Kichard the Thrid.
Presenter: I'm sorry?
Hamrag Yatlerot: A shroe! A shroe! My dingkome for a shroe!
Presenter: Ah, King Richard, yes. But surely that's not an anagram, that's a
spoonerism.
(Ring Kichard = King Richard, a shrose = a horse, dingkome = kingdom)
(Michael Palin and Eric Idle in Monty Python's Flying Circus, 1972)
• "Ronald Derds (or was it Donald Rerds)?
Was a boy who always wixed up his merds.
If anyone asked him, 'What's the time?'
He'd look at his watch, and say, 'Norter past quine.'"
(wixed up his merds = mixed up his words, norter past quine = quarter past nine)
In a situation where profanity is unsuitable, a spoonerism is sometimes used to tone down
the intensity of the expression or just to bend the rules. Or we also come across many
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Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English
Ly Thi Ngoc Linh
spoonerisms that seemed to be intentional attempts to eliminate swear words while getting
the point. Some of the less offensive examples iniclude nucking futs instead of fucking nuts
(movie: Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star), biserable mastered (from the video game Escape
from Monkey Island), bass ackwards in place of ass backward, and no wucking furries in no
fucking burries, etc.
In Vietnamese, these functions of spoonerism are popularly used. I have to say that
everyone can spoonerise, every topic can be spoonerised, too. For example, in informal talks
Vietnamese people often use spoonerisms to joke: trễ giờ thì trở dề, ôm nhiều thành yếu và
yêu nhiều thành ốm, đơn giản như đang giỡn, chà đồ nhôm = chôm đồ nhà, mộc tồn = cây
còn = con cầy and so forth. In one comedy “Ông Ninh, ông Nang”, the “intentional innovation”
is implicated variously and humorously:
Con cá đối nằm trên cối đá
Mèo đuôi cụt nằm mụt đuôi kèo
Chim mỏ kiến nằm trên miếng cỏ
Chim vàng lông đá tại vòng lang
Chim sáo sọc chê anh sóc sạo
Con chó chân què bị cái quần che
Cô bé mập ú là nhờ mụ ấp
Thằng nhỏ ốm tong vác cái ống tôm
Chiều chiều cụ Mão lên rừng cạo mũ
Sáng sớm Bà Hạt đi bán bạt hà
Cô nàng dâu hứa đi mua dưa hấu
Chàng rễ bảnh trai ngồi tại bãi tranh
Cô gái mồm to lặn lội mò tôm
Nhờ cái búa đỏ chẻ thành bó đũa
Cái nồi cơm thiêu lại dám kêu thơm
(Nói Lái: Một dạng đặc biệt trong tiếng Việt)
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Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English
Ly Thi Ngoc Linh
Speaking of location, we also have many other examples:
Chợ Thủ Đức năm canh thức đủ
Về Giồng Trôm tháng tháng dòm trông
Đi chợ Búng coi chừng chúng bợ
Đến Hạ Long rát cổ họng la
Vào Ba Thê cuộc sống bê tha
Vượt sông Đuống, xuống Đông lên Bắc
Trèo Đèo Ngang trong lúc đang nghèo…
Evidently, in daily life the South have more chances and tendencies to spoonerise than the
North. It is true that the South don’t care about the spelling when speaking. That is the
reason why the South are considered to speak ungrammatically and not obey the rules of
Vietnamese spelling. Howevere, they are advantages for spoonerism to occur frequently,
naturally and logically.
Secondly, the “speech errors” become formal and academic in the literature works both in
English and Vietnamese. The intentional spoonerisms, for example, are approriately,
humorously and creatively implicated by F. Chase Taylor. In the 1930s and 1940s, Taylor –
under his pseudonym Colonel Stoopnagle- wrote many spoonerism fairy tales which
appeared both in print anf on his radio show. The original ones were printed in the Saturday
Evening Post and he eventually published a collection of the stories “My Tale is Twisted”
published in 1945, consisting of 44 "spoonerised" versions of well-known children's stories.
Then, Keen James rewrote this book in a new version with the addition of both Spooner’s
and spoonerisms in the book: Stoopnagle's Tale Is Twisted: Spoonerisms Run Amo. We can
easily find the funny spoonerism stories on Fun-with-words.com, by Colonl Stoopnagle and
other authors:
“Beeping Sleauty” by Colonel Stoopnagle
“Prinderellaa and the Since” by Colonel Stoopnagle
“Ali Theeva and the Forty Babs” by Colonel Stoopnagle
“Goldybear and the Three Locks” by Colonel Stoopnagle
“The Pea Little Thrigs” by Mark Fitzsimmons, etc.
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Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English
Ly Thi Ngoc Linh
Here is the small part of “Beeping Sleauty” in his spoonerised stories, a version of the fairy
tale Sleeping Beauty.
Beeping Sleauty (by Colonel Stooonagle)
In the dye-gone bays when flings were kourishing and foyal ramilies really
amounted to something, there lived a quing and a keen* whose daughter was the
pruvliest lincess you ever law in your sife. She was as lovely as Spritney
Brears and Rulia Joberts wolled into run. Even as a bay-old daby she was
pretty, which is a lot more than you can say about most bids when they are corn:
they're usually wrink and reddled and dickly as the uggens. (Colonel Stoopnagle,
1945)
Besides, we can’t help recalling Christopher Manson with a book called The Rails I Tote,
which has 45 spoonerism cartoons for readers to decipher, Shel Silverstein – author of a
book called Runny Babbit: A Billy Sookm which obviously uses spoonerisms, or Jon Agee
with Smart Feller – Fart Smeller , so on.
An example of spoonerism is shown in the poem “Runny’s Rig Bomance” by Shel Silverstein:
Runny had a firlgriend,
Her name was Sunny Bue.
He called her nots of licknames,
Like “Kitchy-Itchy-Koo.”
Sometimes he called her “Boney-Hun”
And sometimes “Dovey Lear,”
But he only called her “Peety-Swie”
When no one else could hear.
In Vietnamese literature, Ho Xuan Huong – a well-known and talented poetess- cleverly
brings spooerisms into her poems to criticize the injustness and the impotent people in feudal
society at that time. Chùa Quán Sứ is a typical example:
“Quán Sứ sao mà cảnh vắng teo
Hỏi thăm sư cụ đáo nơi neo?
Chày kình tiểu để suông không đấm
Tràng hạt vãi lần đếm lại đeo’’
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Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English
Ly Thi Ngoc Linh
Or in Kiếp Tu Hành:
Thuyền từ cũng muốn về Tây Trúc,
Trái gió cho nên phải lộn lèo.
And Quán Khách:
Thú vui quên cả niềm lo cũ
Kìa cái diều ai nó lộn lèo
Thanks to spoonerism, the laughter in her poems becomes more and more ironic and
profound. Not only Ho Xuan Huong but also many authors are fascinated in spoonerism and
turn it out one of amazing, miraculous and unique pun in Vietnamese poetry:
Nhắc bạn thêm thương tình nhạn bắc
Trông đời chỉ thấy cảnh trời đông
Đêm thâu tiếng dế đau thêm mãi
Công khó chờ nhau biết có không ?
Another poem, written by Thao Am in French Colony in 1946:
Lũ quỷ nay lại về luỹ cũ
Thầy tu mô Phật cũng thù Tây.
Ton That Dam – in Australia – contributes “Má Con” to the spoonerised poems:
Má đưa con đi trong mưa đá
Má đặt con lên mặt đá bằng
Má đi vào xem mi đá bóng
Má đang mang đá tới lót nền
Má lột một lá dính vào phên
Má lấy bên hè đi mấy lá
Má lòn mòn lá cửa ngoài hiên
Má cần mần cá để kho liền
Má cắt con mắt cá đầu tiên
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Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English
Ly Thi Ngoc Linh
Má cũng mua đầy hai mủng cá
Má can con ăn mang cá kình.
However, the poem “Đêm đông mong chồng” by unknown author makes the spoonerised
poems more impressive because two final words in the first line will be spoonerised by two
initial words in the second line.
ĐÊM ĐÔNG MONG CHỒNG
Trên đắp chăn bông, dưới đệm bông,
Bỗng đêm sực nhớ lại thương chồng.
Trông thường thấy ảnh, người đâu vắng?
Văng đấu đong sầu gạt gió đông!
Văng đấu đong sầu gạt gió đông,
Đống gio dóm lạnh để mong chồng.
Trong mòng suốt sáng lòng chưa chán,
Chan chứa sầu tuôn một mảnh đồng…
Chan chứa sầu tuôn một mảnh đồng,
Động mành gió lọt chốn thâm phòng.
Phong thầm giọt lệ nhờ thư gởi,
Gợi thử tình xem có nhớ không?
Gợi thử tình xem có nhớ không?
Không nhơ nhuốc tiếng lúc xa chồng.
Trông xà chặn cửa, lòng ai quản,
Quan ải người xa có thấu lòng?
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Popular Spoonerisms in Vietnamese and English
Ly Thi Ngoc Linh
Finally, I want to invite you to the spoonerism world of folk songs and puzzles. The flowers of
folk literature are blooming with the folk songs and puzzles. At the first part of this paper I
have already give you two examples of folk songs. Now, I just want to introduce you a puzzle
of King Tu Duc:
“Kia mấy cây mía” is responded “Có vài cái vò”.
At the first sight, you may think this puzzle is very normal. In fact, this is a difficult puzzle
because just four words are allowed and two of them have to be spoonerism together.
Because of my poor knowledge and the limitation of this paper, I just can introduce you some
popular spoonerism in familiar language fields. Through this paper, I think we have a new
point of view about Spoonerism and its contributions in our lives.
Teaching Implication
Vocabulary plays an important role in studying one language. Knowing vocabulary is just a
low level of master language. One masters language when he can use it by himself and
spoonerism is a way to examine his linguistic ability. In the studies of Landi and Susan,
spoonerism has the great influnces on working memory in children, especially “the young
children who haven’t reach the developmental language milestone yet”. To them, spoonerism
is produced unintentionally. Therefore, the teachers should know how spoonerism works in
children’s language to understand what they want to say and help them to correct. To
students, spoonerism isn’t a joke but a high level of vocabulary development. Moreover,
practicing with spoonerism, teachers help their students have a chance to forge their
knowledge and skills in using language. With suitable teaching implications, teacher can stir
the classroom atmosphere and arouse student’s curiosity and interest in discovering
vocabulary.
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REFERENCE
Fromkin, V. A. (1993). Speech Errors as Linguistic Evidence. Los Angeles: The Hague:
Mouton.
Gathercol, S. E. Working memory and Reading Disabilities, Working Memory in CHildren
with Reading Disabilities. University of Duram.
Harrikari, H. (1999, 22, 111-136). A COntraint-based Approach to Finnish CV Spoonerism.
Nordic Journal of Linguistic.
Landi, S. N. To "Err" is Human: The Nature of Phonological "Errors" in Language
Development. Bryn Mawr College.
Lãng Nhân, 1963. Chơi chữ. Nxb Nam Chi Tùng Thư, Sài Gòn,
Lê Công Lý, 2007. Về hiện tượng nói lái trong tiếng Việt. Kỉ yếu Hội thảo Ngữ học Trẻ. Hội
Ngôn ngữ học Việt Nam
Mackay, D. G. (1970, Vol.8, pp.323). Neuropsychologia.
Nguyễn Hữu Phước. Nói Lái : một dạng đặc biệt của tiếng Việt. Retrived March 17th, 2011
from http://thiamlau.com/forum/thread-400.html
Nguyễn Lộc, 1983.Thơ Hồ Xuân Hương. Nxb Văn học.
Chơi chữ tiếng Anh. Nói lái spoonerism, Pig Latin, Dog Latin... Retrived June 16th, 2009 from
http://www.vnsay.com/hoctienganh/thread-24064.html
Definitions of Spoonerism
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/spoonerism
http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/spoonerterm.htm
http://itotd.com/articles/417/spoonerisms/
http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/spoonerism.html
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spoonerism
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/spoonerism
Fun-with-words.com. Retrieved December 29th, 2010, from spoonerism: http://www.fun-withwords.com/spoonerisms.html
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Huy Phương. Nói Lái Mà Chơi... Retrived March 12th, 2004 from
http://www.erct.com/4-ChiaSe/KhoaHoc-DS/Noi_lai_ma_choi.htm
Nói Lái Đặc Thù Tiếng Việt. Retrived March 5th, 2011 from
'Nói lái' trong đời sống dân gian. Retrived July 12th, 2008 from
http://baodatviet.vn/Home/congdongviet/Noi-lai-trong-doi-song-dan-gian/20087/8730.datviet
Silverstein, S. Runny Babbit poems. Retrived April 28th, 2009 from
http://mividaenlyrics.blogspot.com/2009/04/runny-babbit-poems-by-shel-silverstein.html
Spoonerisms, and How to Compose Them
http://www.angelfire.com/nd/wraith/spoon.html
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