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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
Initially I thought I had stumbled upon an eggcorn mother grove, in the travel blog (traveblogue?) of a Danish student traveler. These stories and photos from Namibia had the somewhat disturbing title of World tour: Diaries and photos from many executions. I was wrapped until I came across the following lines, and then I knew it had all gone south.
I hit the base-camp after four hours, and swap the boots thongs. An other kilometre to the restaurant, and I deserve a cupertino! ... After several cupertinos and some Fantas, I got my photos back-upped, uploaded this diary and watched the striped mice, mousebirds, sunbirds and all the other wildlife that lives in the garden underneath the porch I am sitting on. For 45 minutes of internet, four cupertinos, two Fantas and a oryx pie with fries, I pay 150N$.
The Cupertino effect is the substitution of a similarly-spelled but absurdly inappropriate word by a spell-checker. The original cupertino (which is a font, and the California home of Apple) was offered as the correct spelling of “co-operation” with the hyphen. Clearly, that’s not what’s lurking behind these cupertinos. My guess is that it was a variant of “cuppatea”. Or better, “cappuccino”.
Too bad: Here are excerpts of the amassing profusion that were suddenly revealed to be mere silicisms. Some of these have entries elsewhere on this forum. I don’t think they are all cupertinos. Some look like Yalts, others malaprops, others misspellings. A bit of everything.
NEW FEATURE: HOOVER THE PHOTOS, AND READ THE EXPLANATIONS.
We are in a narrow gorge, in which a narrow creak falls and runs through. I walk up on the top, where I find an amassing view over a waste valley.
We drive in-between salt pans, black volcanic rock and granite, holed like a Switch cheese.
(The toilet) After dark, I discover the “door” is a chain, and there are a sealing: Millions of stars!
The sun gets low, and it creates a magician view through the yellow grass, leaving the animals as black silhouettes.
One of the illusive lizards turns out to be a agama, which poses on a pole.
A small group of gouts or cow are the only man-creation besides from the road. Even birds seems to be scars, the smaller buzzers which else seems to be common are missing.
Last edited by David Bird (2010-02-10 22:29:45)
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A strange document, indeed.
My guess is that most of the errors are a result of using an English spell checker. The writer enters a phonetically spelled word into a word processor. It is not a recognizable English word, so the spell checker highlights the word and the user picks from the spelling suggestions an English word that seems phonetically close. Perhaps spell-completion software might also be in play.
This might even explain “cupertino.” The Word spell checker with Office 2007 has “cupertino” in its word list.
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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