The New York Times published a story called "Wikipedia: Exploring Fact City," which compared the encyclopedia to New York City, claiming that they’re both unfinished and full of avenues and detours. The article itself is oddly poetic (and somewhat substancless) for an NYT piece, but it does have some witty insights. Noam Cohen, the writer, points out that Wikipedia helped him learn what a Soramimi, a Japanese word for hearing foreign song lyrics as words in your own language, was. The article itself is worth checking out, but so is Wikipedia’s entry on Soramimi.

I myself have had a few instances of Soramimi. A song I heard in 7th grade called "Dimelo" by Voices of Theory gained very strange meanings to me due to my lack of knowledge of Spanish.

My interpretation was pretty terrible:

The actual lyrics, "Mi amor seguira creciendo mas y mas (my love will keep growing more and more)" I heard as "yah, no saggy rocky mossy moss." Uh, the moral of the story is learn another language.

Got any Soramimis of your own? Share!