Click to see Ronnie Barker's Mispronunciation Sketch on YouTube

Here is a wonderful example of the fun you can have by playing with language. The late Ronnie Barker, a British comedian and actor, plays with words by substituting letters (words → worms), replacing words and phrases with other similar-sounding words and phrases (chairman → charming; stiff upper lip → lipped upper stuff), and by scrambling the sounds within words (difficulty → dickifelty). Here is my attempt at transcribing this sketch. Students of English, if you would like a listening challenge, try listening to the sketch. Can you figure out what the highlighted words and phrases below are meant to sound like? To check your answers, just hold the mouse pointer over a highlighted word or phrase, and you should see the answer pop up. NOTE: If English is your mother tongue, and especially if you are British, you can help me: if you notice any flaws in my transcription, or if you can teach me the bits I was unable to interpret, please let me know so that I can update the transcipt!

このビデオは言葉遊びのおもしろさの見事な例です。故ロニーバーカー氏は、イギリスの俳優・コメディアンで、このコントでは次のように言葉をいじっ て笑いを誘います： 文字を入れ替えたり（例えば、words を worms に）、発音が似ている単語やフレーズを入れ替えたり（例えば、chairman を charming に、stiff upper lip を lipped upper stuff に）、単語内の音節をごちゃ混ぜにしたりします（例えば、difficulty を dickifelty に）。以下、私ができる限り正確にコントの内容を書き留めた文章です。英語の聞き取りチャレンジに挑みませんか？コントに聞きながら文中のハイライトされ た言葉は何を指しているか考えてください。正解を見るには、その言葉の上にマウスポインタを置いたら表示されます。では、Enjoy!

“Good evening. I’m squeaking to you tonight, once again, as the chairman for the Loyal Society for the Prevention of Pismonunciation, a society formed to help people who can’t say their worms correctly. I myself often use the wrong worms, and that is why I was erected charming of the society.

Firstly, let me try and put you in the puncture regarding our mumblers. Now, peach and every plum of them have dickifelty in conversing with the people they meet in everyday loaf; their murkweights at the figtree or the orifice, or even in their own holes, min and woof, sarther and fun, bruzzer and thistle, unable to commainicute.

Now this can be an enormous bandichap to our tremblers at all times, especially at Bismuth’s time, because Bismuth is a season of grease on earth and pig swill to all men, when the family all get together to eat, drunk and be messy, gather around the fireside cracking nits, smelling Tories and singing old pongs and barrels. And many of our rumblers lose out on these skindle pastimes. A very close fringe of mine, for instance, once went carol-slinging with the local church queer. But instead of singing “Good King Wensles’s ass stuck out / And his feet were steaming,” he sang “Go rest your belly, gentlemen / Let nothing rude display,” which of course caused havoc amongst the queer and deeply upended the knicker’s wife. This is just one instance of what my tremblers have to stiffer with a lipped upper stuff.

What we need now is money to build clubs and calamity centers where people don’t have to bother with the right worms, places where they can greet each other with a cheery “Good afternuts, how nice to squeeze you;” a place where they can play a game of ping tennis or table pong, Scribble or newts and crutches.

Now, many famous people are patrons of the society, piddlyticians like Whidley Whitelaw, Sir Geoffrey Who and Mr. Dennis Holy, also famous TV nosebleeders like Reggie Boozenport, Angela Ripe’un and Anna Flawed - and of course, Mrs. Harry Whitemouse (not to be confused with Mrs. Woodlouse the Hogdangler). Among the aristocracy there’s Lord Longfelt, there is the Duchess of Bedbug and Lord Montyboo of Goulie. But patronage is not enough. Remember the worms of William Shakespiece, our great national po-face: “A horse, a house, my kingdom for a hearse.” And of course, eventually he got all three. What we need is printed matter. Any sort of printed matter, no mitter what sort. Send your magazines, nose papers, dicks and booktionaires. Do it now. Bundle it up in postules and post it to one of our mini-branches, dotted all over the Bottish Isles: Minchester, Hirmingbum, Loverpill, and as far north as the Firth of Filth.

We’re also busy setting up outposts in foreign pants, too, all over the glob. In fact, we have just opened a branch in Siam. And now, in confusion, I would like you to join me in singing the Siamese notional anthem, to the tune of God Save the Queer.

OWA TANA SIAM
OWA TANA SIAM
I YAMUT WIT
OWA TAPHOO LAMAI
OWA TAPHOO LAMAI
OWA TANA SIAM
OWA TANIT”