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(d) Misunderstandings.
Section 106. (I) Verbal Misunderstandings.[1]

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."[3]

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.[2] 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.