From: utzoo!decvax!pur-ee!dan
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Title: another school anecdote
Article-I.D.: pur-ee.469
Posted: Thu Jul 29 11:16:08 1982
Received: Fri Jul 30 04:50:17 1982

The anecdote from "Re: another anecdote, by escs!jpj" reminds of one
that a freind of mine told me.  Apparently this electrical engineering
student had a class that sported a Indian (near East) teachers
assistant.  One word in particular eluded the understanding of the
entire class for almost the whole semester.  The word was pronounced
"boog-a-round", or something like "bugs around".  Finally, my friend
found out that the word was actually 'background'.  It is amazing that
one can pronounce a word so closely to what it should be, but still be
misunderstood.

				Dan Ulrich
				pur-ee!dan