It was a serious moment. Great fanfare rang out and Queen Camilla was followed by King Charles III. he walked down the aisle with a dignified step. The choir begins the Latin chorus “Vivat Regina Camilla” and “Vivat Rex Carolus”, namely “Long Live Queen Camilla” and “Long Live King Charles”.

But many TV viewers laughed out loud at that time because they clearly heard the phrase “I like Camilla’s pussy”. Two things are responsible for this – the English pronunciation of Latin and a phenomenon called monodegreen.

Latin has many pronunciations. Classical Latin was spoken by the ancient Romans until around 200 AD. Medieval ecclesiastical, or ecclesiastical, Latin differed in its pronunciation. And the pronunciation of Latin in the presentation of each country is also different.

The ancient Romans would read the sentence “Vivat Regina Camilla” much like Czechs do today, i.e. “Vivat Regina Kamila”, then the Catholics would change the “g” sound to “dž” and sing “Vivat Redžina Kamila” .

However, in the English version from Latin, it says “Vajvat Režajna Kamil”. This is due to the so-called major vowel shift, which occurred in English between 1500 and 1650. At that time, most vowels changed their pronunciation and some of them became diphthongs, that is, diphthongs. However, this is not reflected in the spelling, so today, for example, we read the word night as “najt”, even though the original pronunciation is “nicht”.

However, today’s native speakers of English usually know very little about their own speech development, so strange things like “vajvat regajna” probably come out of their mouths.

And considering that the English word regina is nearly the same pronunciation as the word vagina, the pranksters are having a blast.

The resulting sentence “I like Camilla’s pussy” is distinctively monodegreen, that is, a pun created by intentional or unintentional mishearing or confusion of similar-sounding words. New and completely meaningless words can also be created. In Czech, we have lemroucha (hem of the robe) or Hrdý Budžes (be proud that you are…).

American writer Sylvia Wright came up with the name of this pun in the 1850s, when her mother was reading the Scottish ballad The Bonny Earl of Murray. Writers always hear “They killed Earl o’ Moray And Lady Mondegreen”, i.e. “They killed Earl o’ Moray and Lady Mondegreen”. In fact, the poem goes “They killed Earl o’ Moray and laid him in the field”.