The Mandela Effect: False Memory

[AgProv]

Similarly, I once had a full on argument with someone about the spelling of vacum.
She pointed out that I'd missed out a "u".
I told her not to be so ridiculous; why on earth would it require two u's...?

One Google later, and I was profusely apologetic, though I still maintain that, in my original universe, it is vacum.

this gave me a few brainfart moments.... the spelling of the word "vacuum" at primary school...

" Vee, ay, see, double-you, emmm"

Of course, sight unseen, I took Teacher's word and wrote it "vacwm", which is almost the phonetic spelling in Welsh (facwm) but doesn't cut it in English.

"But miss, you said "double-you!"

(Teacher does forehead-and-palm-of-hand thing)

"I know what i said..."

 

[Ladyloafer]

this gave me a few brainfart moments.... the spelling of the word "vacuum" at primary school...

" Vee, ay, see, double-you, emmm"

Of course, sight unseen, I took Teacher's word and wrote it "vacwm", which is almost the phonetic spelling in Welsh (facwm) but doesn't cut it in English.

"But miss, you said "double-you!"

(Teacher does forehead-and-palm-of-hand thing)

Well, you weren't uurong

"I know what i said..."

Well, you weren't uurong.

 

[AgProv]

English, huh. No wonder foreigners find it hard going!

 

[Ladyloafer]

English, huh. No wonder foreigners find it hard going!

I think generally most foreigners who can speak english, speak it much better than english people can speak 'foreign'.

(Does that sentence make sense in any language?)

 

[ramonmercado]

Don't get me started on "from whence".

Return from whence you came, you pedant!

 

[Coypu]

I think generally most foreigners who can speak english, speak it much better than english people can speak 'foreign'.

(Does that sentence make sense in any language?)

Makes perfect sense in Icelandic....
Ég held að almennt séu flestir útlendingar sem geta talað ensku, talað það miklu betur en enskir geti talað „erlendir“.

 

[Mythopoeika]

I learnt (some, not enough, switched to Spanish later, thought it would be more useful, doh!) Latin at my comprehensive in the 1980s, although it had grown out of an old grammar school, so maybe it was some weird hold-over. It wasn't taught to everyone, you could pick it as an option in the third year.

(Our Latin teacher's nickname was Bunny. In a pleasing synchronicity, I once read in the superb Barry Baldwin's column that he also had a Latin master nicknamed Bunny! How weird is that?!)

I went to a grammar school that morphed into a comprehensive. They did teach Latin, but that was just for the 'elite' lads who wanted a career in law or medicine or wanted to go to Oxford or Cambridge. I didn't do it.
The Latin master went on to become the headmaster after I left.

 

[AgProv]

Makes perfect sense in Icelandic....
Ég held að almennt séu flestir útlendingar sem geta talað ensku, talað það miklu betur en enskir geti talað „erlendir“.

On the "it's related to English at some level so let's give it a crack" principle, I was amazed as to how much of that I was able to figure out! Recognised the voiced dental fricative "edd" (ð) and knowing how it's pronounced in Old English ("th-" as in "thank") , a lot of that fell together.... "Eg" like "Ik" in Dutch and "Ek" in Afrikaans. "held" - well, older English, "I hold.... (a proposition, a belief)" , "útlend" - well, "uitlander" in Dutch/Afrikaans, suggests "foreign" or "foreigner".... "miklu", like Scots-English "mickle" for "much, many", and "betur" - is it that simple,... then it clicked...

 

[AgProv]

Erlendir, though, sounds like a character in Middle-Earth ( "Erlendir, king of the Rohirrim and puissant in his might, led forth the Riding in wrath and blood-vengeance of the skraelings of the Dunland...")

 

[escargot]

The teenager who threw a child off the balcony at the Tate Gallery in London was in the news today.

I remember this happening but in my mind, it happened at a museum in Liverpool.

There is a Tate Gallery in Liverpool. There is also a museum of local history, which Techy and I popped into to use the loos on a cycling trip there. We were there around the time of the attack.

So I've mixed it all up in my mind; the museum we visited was the Liverpool Tate and the boy was thrown off the balcony an hour after we left. I can actually picture the emergency services on TV, exactly where we'd been a few hours before!

 

[Ladyloafer]

I remember it as london.

 

[Zeke Newbold]

Don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I have a funny memory around the word "opaque". I'm sure I remember a time when it meant the reverse of what it does now - i.e. transparent rather than not being able to see through something.

Though it may just have been me getting the meaning of the word wrong, I suppose!

Yes, I share this one. To me `opaque` ought to mean something like translucent - say in the way Pears Soap is (no doubt that reference dates me). It seems really odd that there should be a special word to describe something as not transparent, since being not-transparent is surely the general rule with objects.

I was first confronted with the word's true meaning inm a verbal clash with a friend who - as we now say - `destroyed` me over it. I was then well into my thirties and had a degree in Eng. Lit. To this day I still have to do a double-take whenever I encounter the word.

And, no, I'm not getting confused with the use of the word `opacity` - I'm just not that clever.

I remember my mom, who had considerable artistic talent, used the word opaque to mean translucent. She had an old box of something called opaque white ink, if I remember correctly, which of course wouldn't be truly opaque if it was thinned down too much. I wonder if her confusion relates to artists' colors being referred to as "transparent" or "opaque", the former being truly transparent, and the latter being somewhat translucent unless you laid it on thick.

Aha - this could be my get out clause. My dad is a painter and former Art teacher. Perhaps I have picked up my misuse - or rather specialised -handling of the word fro him as a kid.

 

[PeteS]

And more on the Mandela Effect, from my Facebook page:

Having been re-establishing contact with people I knew at university, or finding out more about people I knew at uni, who now number things like tenured academics, a member of parliament, well-placed background wonks in the political process, BBC journalists, national newspaper and magazine journalists and writers, senior bloody lawyers, company directors, PR people, executives in public and private industry, two ministers of religion...

Just wondering if my memory is screwing up. I was very confident that in I think 1985-86, I did a course module, I think in semiotics, which lasted for ten weeks, and a fellow student on this course was a pleasant and softly-spoken Japanese guy called Kazuo Ishiguru. (who went on to write a book or two). But looking at his bio, he was all done and dusted at UEA Norwich by 1982, having got his MA there. Maybe he stayed on in Norwich as part of the wider academic community there and just did the odd elective course in things that took his fancy, that's not un-known. Either that or it was some other Japanese bloke on that course, and my memory has conflated them. But I do clearly remember sharing a classroom with a Japanese chap whose name was pronounced Kashi, or Kashio....

Loads of high-flyers in my time at uni. (David Sutton was there too - he started in the same year as me although our paths barely crossed)
... and then there's me.
Fuck.
View attachment 27280

Pretty much my trajectory as well. I too went to school and uni with people who went on to do great (in their minds) things. One went on to get the highest honours in the land. I can't think of one of them who I would have trusted with the exception of one who went on to be a Bishop and I recently emailed him to reminisce about our 10 years of childhood we spent together. He couldn't even be bothered to reply. Says it all about a lot of these characters.

 

[Mr. Banooka]

A few years ago my wife 'my wife' and I were driving to her mum and dad's when we noticed that a shop that had been there the day before, and for many years beforehand, had gone in what seemed overnight. What made it all the stranger is that not only had the shop gone, but the front extension had been removed and it had been converted into a house, the driveway converted and the parking space in the pavement removed.

It was so confusing for us as this was a route we took at least 4 times a week, and surely we would have noticed that amount of work taking place and there was no way the work could have been done overnight - certainly not in the UK.

Here is a [link] to Google Maps, and low and behold it was a shop when the Google Car went past. When I next get driven past their I'll take a photo of what it looks like now.

We were convinced we had driven into an alternate reality for a while.

Mark ;0)

 

[CarlosTheDJ]

The teenager who threw a child off the balcony at the Tate Gallery in London was in the news today.

I remember this happening but in my mind, it happened at a museum in Liverpool.

There is a Tate Gallery in Liverpool. There is also a museum of local history, which Techy and I popped into to use the loos on a cycling trip there. We were there around the time of the attack.

So I've mixed it all up in my mind; the museum we visited was the Liverpool Tate and the boy was thrown off the balcony an hour after we left. I can actually picture the emergency services on TV, exactly where we'd been a few hours before!

He's just been jailed for a minimum of 15 years.

 

[EnolaGaia]

A few years ago my wife 'my wife' and I were driving to her mum and dad's when we noticed that a shop that had been there the day before, and for many years beforehand, had gone in what seemed overnight. ...

The Google Street View imagery was captured in August 2016.

When did the "recognition of change" occur?

 

[Mr. Banooka]

The Google Street View imagery was captured in August 2016.

When did the "recognition of change" occur?

a good three years ago now I reckon. Every time we drive past there it gets commented on.

 

[EnolaGaia]

a good three years ago now I reckon. Every time we drive past there it gets commented on.

OK, then ... That would seem to narrow the timespan for the changes to sometime between August 2016 and (let's say ... ) summer 2017.

Can you think of any events or situations (vacations; different routines; different routes) that may have been in effect during this hypothetical timeframe that could have led to your not passing by that particular location for at least a week?

(I'm using 1 week as a notional minimum timeframe for a full crew to make the changes with maximum dedicated effort.)

 

[uair01]

Mandela effect website:
http://mandelaeffect.com/

 

[Krepostnoi]

A few years ago my wife 'my wife' and I were driving

I'n not one to judge, and other people's domestic arrangements are none of my business, but I have to ask: doesn't that lead to long and awkward silences between the driver and the two passengers?

 

[Krepostnoi]

It is like the tendency of people to say "an amount of people" when it is a "number of people".

Ooh, that's a new one on me, even though I have a certain pedantic streak. (Well, I say pedantic, but actually I think you'll find I'm splitting hairs.) What do you object to in the admixture of "amount" and "people"? I'll allow it lacks a certain mellifluity, but is there anything more to it?

 

[PeteS]

OK, then ... That would seem to narrow the timespan for the changes to sometime between August 2016 and (let's say ... ) summer 2017.

Can you think of any events or situations (vacations; different routines; different routes) that may have been in effect during this hypothetical timeframe that could have led to your not passing by that particular location for at least a week?

(I'm using 1 week as a notional minimum timeframe for a full crew to make the changes with maximum dedicated effort.)

I could imagine this reconversion taking a week with dedicated effort if the front extension had not been removed but just left in place. (Strange that it was taken down really). Having monitored hundreds of building contracts on properties, I doubt that this could have been achieved in less than 4 to 6 weeks. I guess you never know though when an entire Mcdonalds was put in place over a weekend some years ago! No doubt the neighbours or the owner would be able to explain.
I love strange little observations like this, where on the face of it there is no logical explanation to the observer.

 

[Mr. Banooka]

OK, then ... That would seem to narrow the timespan for the changes to sometime between August 2016 and (let's say ... ) summer 2017.

Can you think of any events or situations (vacations; different routines; different routes) that may have been in effect during this hypothetical timeframe that could have led to your not passing by that particular location for at least a week?

(I'm using 1 week as a notional minimum timeframe for a full crew to make the changes with maximum dedicated effort.)

We were chatting about it last night and the only time we can think of was end of May 2017 as we were in Florida for 2 weeks. We've put it down to being so familiar with the scene that our brains filled in the shop still being there until one of us noticed it had gone.

It obviously had to have taken time, with the amount of work that was required. It still baffles us though how we couldn't have noticed it. The other thing that did spring to mind is whether there was a large vehicle parked in front for a some time, so we couldn't see what was going on.

 

[EnolaGaia]

We were chatting about it last night and the only time we can think of was end of May 2017 as we were in Florida for 2 weeks. We've put it down to being so familiar with the scene that our brains filled in the shop still being there until one of us noticed it had gone.

That's a reasonable interpretation ... It's not unusual to overlook details in peripheral items along a routine route unless something sufficiently different or prominent catches your attention.

... It still baffles us though how we couldn't have noticed it. The other thing that did spring to mind is whether there was a large vehicle parked in front for a some time, so we couldn't see what was going on.

If it had been here in the States the first thing I'd have considered would be a large roll-away "dumpster" (bin) of the sort often positioned on construction sites - especially ones where demolition is being done.

Another thing to point out is that the shop / house sits near an intersection - raising the possibility distraction played a part in missing the changes. For example, a driver's attention would more probably be directed toward the intersection and traffic light (approaching the larger road) by the time the shop's front was visible (owing to the hedges).

 

[AlchoPwn]

Ooh, that's a new one on me, even though I have a certain pedantic streak. (Well, I say pedantic, but actually I think you'll find I'm splitting hairs.) What do you object to in the admixture of "amount" and "people"? I'll allow it lacks a certain mellifluity, but is there anything more to it?

It shows a certain implied lack of understanding and courtesy. An "amount" is more akin to a given weight or volume of sand or water. Humans are discrete individuals, for better or worse, and shouldn't be described in those terms. Plus it grates on me as I have to mark papers with this mistake in them all the damn time. I guess if you threw people into a blender you might have an amount of people, but really you would have an amount of human flesh. I hope you grasp the problem. I am typing this having woken up at 3am and not being able to get back to sleep. I hope this is up to par as an explanation.

 

[AgProv]

Here's an interesting one. There is controversy and debate going on at the moment in our ex-UEA students' group as to whether Z-Block at Fifers Lane had basic washstand sinks in the student rooms. This was a big 150+ hall of residence on three floors where a lot of people lived over about 25 years. Now I don't remember the residence room as having a sink. We had seperate bathrooms, and communal showers/toilets at the end of every corridor next to the kirtchen. But I do recall having an electric kettle. So I must have filled it up somewhere. And you know... I honestly don't remember. People joining in the debate are roughly evenly split on this one. And I'm now beginning to doubt myself - maybe residence rooms in Z-block DID have a sink, although Gods know where it would have gone...

 

[JamesWhitehead]

God knows where it would have gone . . .

Can't speak for UEA but I remember Bangor's halls had a wash basin with hot and cold running water inside a cupboard. It was handy for those of us developing Auden-like habits. Rugger-buggers probably shat in it as well.

 

[uair01]

Can't speak for UEA but I remember Bangor's halls had a wash basin with hot and cold running water inside a cupboard. It was handy for those of us developing Auden-like habits. Rugger-buggers probably shat in it as well.

Could hardly keep myself from posting the famous "let that sink in" meme.

 

[Meechyemoo]

Can't speak for UEA but I remember Bangor's halls had a wash basin with hot and cold running water inside a cupboard. It was handy for those of us developing Auden-like habits. Rugger-buggers probably shat in it as well.

Which halls in Bangor and when where you there? I had a sink in my room. There was communal toilets and 2 rooms with a shower and 1 with a bath. A revolting kitchen with two ring baby belling for 15 people. These halls have been rebuilt and I think the current students would not even cross the threshold if they saw them as they were in my day.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Which halls in Bangor and when where you there?

Plas Gwyn has, as you suggest, been replaced by smaller self-catering blocks. On our* penultimate, nostalgic visit, the old place was in the throes of demolition. Evidently nothing had been spent on it since the seventies, when we haunted it! The same hideous orange rags of curtains were hanging in the windows. I think that was the same day we visited Theatre Gwynedd, under notice of demolition. The kindly staff, on their last week there, allowed us into the auditorium for a few quiet minutes. It was Cinema Paradiso and The Last Picture Show rolled into one!

It is, I think, four years since our last trip, when we were able to visit the new Pont Centre. So much has changed. I suppose eventually, only the old College-on-the-Hill will remain standing as a place of pilgrimage for old alumni!

*Not the royal we. I go with my oldest and best friend, whom I met in Plas Gwyn!