My recent column on children's verbal errors elicited a batch of delightful anecdotes from readers.

Bonnie Reinders reports that, as a young girl, she rendered the line from the Christmas carol "O Holy Night" "long lay the world" as "long-legged world." Claire Fazio remembers her son's singing "Felice Navidad" as "Release Mommy's Duck."

Another reader said a childhood friend interpreted the line from an old Latin hymn — "Macula non est in Te" ("There is no stain in You") — as "Dracula drinks Nescafe." That friend later went to the seminary.

A reader named Kathy recalls that, after moving her family from the North to Oklahoma, her 5-year-old daughter asked her why everyone there wanted God to be cleaner. When Kathy asked what she meant, the girl said, "Everyone down here 'washups' him."

David Menkes of Auckland, New Zealand, grew up in California, where he misheard the line in the Pledge of Allegiance as "and to the republic for witched stands." He said he visualized "roadside stalls, perhaps at Halloween, thronged with witches buying or selling apples, pumpkins, broomsticks or black cats."

Kami McManus reports that one day her 6-year-old son, Connor, came home from school and told her he hadn't been able to talk to Jesus at recess. Asked why, he said, "Because he is the sun of God, and it is cloudy out today."

Duane Schrag of Freeman, S.D., recalls that, when a friend teaching in a Catholic elementary school asked her students to write the Rosary, almost all of them rendered one line as, "Blessed is the fruit of thy wound, Jesus."

"When I was in first grade," writes Kathleen Egan, "I thought God was a gigantic legume because Sister Anna Marie had said that God was the 'Supreme Bean.'"

Lionel Loza couldn't figure out why his son Thomas was knocking over his toy dinosaurs one by one and shouting, "You stink! You stink!" Then he realized Thomas was saying, "You're extinct! You're extinct!"

Ann Manz of McKeesport, Pa., remembers that, when her husband was teaching good toilet habits to their 3-year-old son, Eric, the boy emerged from the bathroom and sputtered fearfully, "We have bugs!" All because his father had pointed to his zipper and said, "This is a fly."

And when one dad told his 7-year-old daughter he was tired because he was "getting old," she replied, "Well, Daddy, I wish you were new again."

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045. To find out more about Rob Kyff and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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