Here too it is not possible to draw an absolutely definite boundary
between acoustic illusions and misunderstandings. Verbally we may say
that the former occur when the mistake, at least in its main
characteristic, is due to the aural mechanism. The latter is intended
when there is a mistake in the comprehension of a word or of a sentence.
In this case the ear has acted efficiently, but the mind did not know
how to handle what had been heard and so supplements it by something
else in connection with matter more or less senseless. Hence,
misunderstandings are so frequent with foreign words. Compare the
singing of immigrant school children, “My can’t three teas of tea” for
“My country ’tis of thee,” or “Pas de lieu Rhone que nous” with “Paddle
your own canoe.”[329]
The question of misunderstandings, their development and solution, is of
great importance legally, since not only witnesses but clerks and
secretaries are subject to them. If they are undiscovered they lead to
dangerous mistakes, and their discovery causes great trouble in getting
at the correct solution.[330] The determination of texts requires not
only effort but also psychological knowledge and the capacity of putting
one’s self in the place of him who has committed the error. To question
him may often be impossible because of the distance, and may be useless
because he no longer knows what he said or wanted to say. When we
consider what a tremendous amount of work classical philologists, etc.,
have to put into the determination of the proper form of some misspelled
word, we can guess how needful it is to have the textual form of a
protocol absolutely correct. The innocence or guilt of a human being may
depend upon a misspelled syllable. Now, to determine the proper and
correct character of the text is as a rule difficult, and in most cases
impossible. Whether a witness or the secretary has misunderstood, makes
no difference in the nature of the work. Its importance remains
unaffected, but in the latter case the examining justice, in so far as
he correctly remembers what he has heard, may avoid error. The mistakes
of the secretaries may in any event be reduced to a minimum if all
protocols are read immediately, and not by the secretary but by the
examining judge himself. If the writer reads them he makes the same
mistakes, and only a very intelligent witness will perceive them and
call attention to them. Unless it so happens the mistake remains.
I cite a few of the errors that I have observed. From a protocol with
the suspect: “On the twelfth of the month I left Marie Tomizil” (instead
of, “my domicile”). Instead of “irrelevant,”--“her elephant.” Very often
words are written in, which the dictator only says by the way; e.g.,
“come in,” “go on,” “hurry up,” “look out,” etc. If such words get into
the text at all it is difficult to puzzle out how they got in. How
easily and frequently people misunderstand is shown by the oath they
take. Hardly a day passes on which at least one witness does not say
some absolute nonsense while repeating it.
The discovery of such errors and the substitution of what is correct
brings us back to the old rule that the mere study of our own cases can
not teach us anything, since the field of view is too narrow, the
material too uniform, and the stimulation too light. Other disciplines
must be studied and examples from the daily life must be sought. Goethe,
in particular, can teach us here. In his little monograph, “Hör-,
Schreib-and Druckfehler,” he first tells that he had discovered the most
curious mistakes in hearing when he reread dictated letters, mistakes
which would have caused great difficulty if not immediately looked
after. The only means for the solution of these errors is, he says, “to
read the matter aloud, get thoroughly into its meaning and repeat the
unintelligible word so long that the right one occurs in the flow of
speech. Nobody hears all that he knows, nobody is conscious of all that
he senses, is able to imagine, or to think. Persons who have never been
to school tend to turn into German all Latin and Greek expressions. The
same thing happens just as much with words from foreign languages whose
pronunciation is unknown to the writer ... and in dictation it occurs
that a hearer sets his inner inclination, passion, and need in the place
of the word he has heard, and substitutes for it the name of some loved
person, or some much desired good morsel.” A better device for the
detection of errors than that suggested by Goethe cannot be found, but
the protocol or whatever else it may be must be _read_; otherwise
nothing helps. Many mistakes are due, as Münsterberg points out, to the
fact that the word is seen for just an instant, and it is easy to
misread a word so seen if some similar word had been heard or seen just
before. The most senseless corruptions of text occur often, and it seems
extraordinary how they may be overlooked. Andresen points out that the
reason for all popular explanations is the consciousness of language
which struggles against allowing any name to be an empty sound, and
still more, strives to give each term a separate meaning and an
indubitable intelligibility. The human mind acts here instinctively and
naïvely without any reflection, and is determined by feeling or
accident. Then it makes all kinds of transformations of foreign words.
This fits with the analogous observation that a group of Catholic patron
saints depend for their character on their names. Santa Clara makes
clear vision; St. Lucy sounds like lucida, and is the saint of the
blind; St. Mamertus is analogous to mamma, the feminine breast, and is
the patron saint of nurses and nursing women. Instructive substitutions
are Jack Spear, for Shakespeare, Apolda for Apollo; Great victory at le
Mans, for Great victory at Lehmanns; “plaster depot,” for “place de
Repos.”
Andresen warns us against going too far in analysis. Exaggerations are
easy, particularly when we want to get at the source of a
misunderstanding because of the illegibility of the style. Our task
consists, first of all, in getting at the correctness of what has been
said or written, otherwise we have nothing whatever to go by. Only when
that is quite impossible may we assume misunderstandings and seek them
out. The procedure then must be necessarily linguistic and psychological
and requires the consultation of experts in both fields. Certain
instructive misunderstandings of the most obvious sort occur when the
half-educated drop their dialect, or thoroughly educated people alter
the dialectical expressions and try to translate them into high German.
It is frequently important to understand the curious transposition in
meaning which foreign words get, e.g., commode, fidel, and famos. A
commode gentleman means in German, a pliable person; and a fidel lad is
not a loyal soul, but a merry, pleasure-seeking one; famos--originally
“famous,”--means expensive or pleasant.
It may be not unimportant to understand how names are altered. Thus, I
know a man who curiously enough was called Kammerdiener, whose father
was an immigrant Italian called Comadina, and I know two old men,
brothers, who lived in different parts of the country, one of whom was
called Joseph Waldhauser, the other Leopold Balthasar. In the course of
the generation the name had so completely changed that it is impossible
to say which is correct. Again, a family bearing the name Theobald is of
French origin and used really to be called Du Val. In Steiermark, which
had been over-run with Turks two hundred years ago, there are many
family names of Turkish origin. Thus Hasenöhrl may come from Hassan Öri;
Salata from Saladin; Mullenbock, from Mullei Beg; Sullman from Soliman.