Very weird theory that I found on the Internet

originally posted by: NarcolepticBuddha
I brought up that same point earlier. Why aren't there other children's books we're misspelling? Winnia the Poob!

I'd be intrigued to learn why a large portion of the population is both pronouncing and spelling "The Chronicles of Narnia" as "The Chronicles of Narnio" if that were happening, too. How are so many people mispronouncing and spelling "Berenstain". -Stain is much simpler to pronounce than figuring out the nuance of -Stein, especially for children. Yet all of us pronounced and spelled the word as though there were an E there and not an A. That's what has got us all thrown for a loop.

a reply to: _Del_

Agreed, _Del_

No would ever look at -stain and think, "steen" or "styne"

So we would've had to misread it, and mispronounce it, and never look at it again

OR

misread it, and mispronounce it, and misread it, and misread it, and misread it ad infinitum.

Yeah that doesn't really sound like me

a reply to: NarcolepticBuddha

Narcoleptic and Rainbow...Thank you both for the hugs. I needed them.

I've done a lot of research on this...I've literally spent hours.
I've seen rude book covers with rude names...obviously photo-shopped....they don't really exist, although the pics look real enough. Makes me wonder if they've ALL been changed on the internet.
That doesn't explain peoples' REAL books changing though.
I feel like I'm going in circles and spinning my wheels at the same time.

I want a break from this, but I can't stop thinking about it.
I found too many (in my opinion) CREDIBLE sources, such as teacher resources, quotes and names cited in other writers' books...to believe that I have also just been misreading and mispronouncing each and every time.
That's just not me.

To finish with?
Like Jon Snow....I know nothing.
jacy

a reply to: jacygirl

jacygirl, you have gone above and beyond the call to provide evidence for the thread. I really appreciate it, and I'm sure everyone else appreciates the research, time, and energy you've expended for us. You have certainly kept the thread highly interesting, if nothing else, and for that you deserve our applause.

I think you can rest now. Sometimes we just have to compromise and accept that, though something is amiss, we may never know exactly how or why.

It's quite a dilemna!

But sometimes I think reality and perception is just too fluid, ever seeking equilibrium, to allow us to settle on an agreed truth. The idea of multiple universes is certainly possible, but so is the possibility of a mass misreading--or like I always say, all outcomes can be possible simultaneously

a reply to: jacygirl

I found too many (in my opinion) CREDIBLE sources, such as teacher resources, quotes and names cited in other writers' books...to believe that I have also just been misreading and mispronouncing each and every time.
That's just not me.

You haven't been misreading. I remember clearly that it was Stein. Just as I clearly remember Pooh bear and Alice in Wonderland and Snow White etc. etc. I don't remember any of them being anything but what they were.

a reply to: Night Star

Aww, thank you Night Star and Narcoleptic!! Such lovely words, much appreciated.

I'm exhausted. Quite sure that I've been up since 1 am because I wanted to keep digging for proof. I am so completely positive in what I remember, and frustrated beyond belief.

I know I will keep searching for the books (in real life)...but I am going to back off on the links and sources.
Really hoping that something shiny will just distract me away from this, lol.

I'm not willing...to...quite...let...go...just...yet...
jacy

a reply to: Diderot

If you had read at least half the thread you would see that many of us have posted (more than once) a specific, vivid, description of how we know/remember the spelling as "Stein".

I do realize that this thread is getting rather large, but the information you ask for is within it in several pages.

I'd like to bring up the fact that MOST of the links are spelled stein, as our memories provide us. As has been said, this is affecting the ardent readers, the teachers, and those with children, because we KNOW we looked at those books, and for whatever nuance by which we remember, we remember stein. Readers and teachers should be less prone to this type of error, as they handle the material all the time, and are more focused on attention to detail.

I'm still trying to figure out a way to explain how there can be so many miss-spellings in so many different areas, and why so many remember the supposedly wrong spelling. Berenstain would be easy to remember, and hard to miss-spell, but for us (the stein camp) to be adamant on a different spelling has me baffled.

a reply to: jacygirl

I too, feel like Jon Snow. I think we might very well just have to learn to live with it at this point. I am not quite giving up yet, but am realizing that I may never find hard proof.

As far as our world goes, I think we are all like Jon Snow.

a reply to: jacygirl

but you were also positive in remembering Zimmerman and it's Zimmern. you can be positive in what you remember and still be incorrect, people do this all the time. with the Zimmerman/Zimmern thing, you either misread, didn't pay enough attention, or Zimmerman is more common than Zimmern and so you went with Zimmerman. it doesn't matter how long you've known the name for. just had a conversation with my dad about this thread and he mentioned how he passed a road where he grew up nearly every day to get to school and work. he thought the name of the road was STOMP ROAD until one day he noticed it was STAMP ROAD; he immediately questioned his reading abilities. he briefly read the name of the road a few times and never bothered fully taking in the word STAMP. for the time he thought it was STOMP, i guess you can say he was convinced that's what it was and reading the word was no longer relevant. glancing at the word to see the outline/shape of STOMP was good enough.

if you're going to continue researching, you're on the right track - keep looking through used bookstores and libraries for prints dating from whenever the books were first published to now. the internet, while a great place to find information quickly, is also filled with faulty information: for example Amazon posts a picture of a Berenstain Bears book while writing "Berenstein" in the product description (i know this is supposed to be evidence of something, to me it's evidence of people spelling it the way it's pronounced without consulting the actual book).

I got a U2U from someone who won't be posting in this thread, and who wishes to remain anonymous.

This person is an ex-librarian who remembers -stain.

I just wanted to add this vote to our polls. This is pretty much all the info that was messaged to me, so don't look into it too much with dissecting questions--I just wanted to add the vote on their behalf.

originally posted by: Kangaruex4Ewe
a reply to: jacygirl


As far as our world goes, I think we are all like Jon Snow.

Kanga,
Mind officially blown. I CANNOT believe you said that!

That is my favourite line from the show, and for some reason...it is stuck in my head lately.
I think the same as you...that we really don't know anything.
We are never going to explain this, are we?

jacy

a reply to: Boswell

It's not just Amazon, and the people posting listings there. We've provided ample evidence that the miss-spelling appears on nearly every website selling the literature/videos/material. I could see if just Amazon had people who can't look at a book title and type it in correctly, but for all the other sites to follow suit? It's disturbing, to say the least.

I'm ALMOST ready to posit a theory that the transition isn't complete, or got bunged up somehow. You must admit, the MAJORITY of people agree it's stein. At least, where we were from. It's a memory because we've read the books, remember the spelling, and it's printed into our minds. It's not something simple like a grammatical error, "piece" or "peice", it's the Proper Name of a Book Title, a popular series at that amongst kids. I've read the very books to my kids when they were little, and they also say stein. Stain is the easy route for a memory pattern. Stein is odd, so why do we think that's the proper spelling?

originally posted by: Druid42
Stain is the easy route for a memory pattern. Stein is odd, so why do we think that's the proper spelling?

Because it's the opposite from what you suggest for the people that misread it. Those people think Stein is not odd for a name, they think it's normal, so that's the filter they use to misread it. Stain on the other hand is filtered out by some as not being part of a typical name.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

What we notice, is when a familiar word is spelled different/wrong.

Why only this name? Why is this suddenly a hot topic on a lot of sites?
Did the last 11:11 that I saw trigger me to suddenly remember incorrectly?
Did John Titor step on a butterfly?

Logic. It's just not working this time.
jacy

originally posted by: jacygirl

originally posted by: Kangaruex4Ewe
a reply to: jacygirl


As far as our world goes, I think we are all like Jon Snow.

Kanga,
Mind officially blown. I CANNOT believe you said that!

That is my favourite line from the show, and for some reason...it is stuck in my head lately.
I think the same as you...that we really don't know anything.
We are never going to explain this, are we?

jacy

I didn't even realize that was a quote from the show. I just thought, like you said.... We don't really know anything. Nada. What we think we know could probably fit on the tip of a pin as opposed to what we don't know which probably fills the vast universe itself.

And no. At this point... I don't think we will ever explain it. I am not giving up yet though. I still have some fight left in me.

originally posted by: Druid42
... Stain is the easy route for a memory pattern. Stein is odd, so why do we think that's the proper spelling?

No. Last names ending in s-t-e-i-n are relatively common. Last names ending in s-t-a-i-n are not.

Therefore, it seems more likely to make an assumption (and incorrect assumption in this case) that the last name of the writers of the books ended in s-t-e-i-n.

originally posted by: Box of Rain

originally posted by: Druid42
... Stain is the easy route for a memory pattern. Stein is odd, so why do we think that's the proper spelling?

No. Last names ending in s-t-e-i-n are relatively common. Last names ending in s-t-a-i-n are not.

Therefore, it seems more likely to make an assumption (and incorrect assumption in this case) that the last name of the writers of the books ended in s-t-e-i-n.

Sorry, but we are talking about well-read people. Writers, teachers, secretaries...people who make a living off words. Then you have parents, who read the same book 3 million times...trust me, we know every single letter ON it and IN it.

Some things have no rational logical level-headed reason.
But they still happen.

jacy

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: Druid42
Stain is the easy route for a memory pattern. Stein is odd, so why do we think that's the proper spelling?

Because it's the opposite from what you suggest for the people that misread it. Those people think Stein is not odd for a name, they think it's normal, so that's the filter they use to misread it. Stain on the other hand is filtered out by some as not being part of a typical name.

Here's where I'll drift from accepting your statement: Easier is easier. Stain is an EASY word to remember, even for those illiterate. Ask somebody to spell stein, and you'll get stine, styne, and stein. Ask somebody to spell stain, and you may get stane, or stain. Most people will use basic vocabulary, and build up from there. We were taught stain early in our vocabularies, while stein (as in beer stein) came much later. The simplest and most common spellings are what people relate to.

IF it was always stain, there'd be no question or reason for this thread. People would just accept it. Yep, that's the way it's always been spelled. That's not what we are finding, and that is the premise I'm following.

Aside of basic vocabulary, this is a compound name based upon root words, and a Proper Noun at that. Proper Nouns have a special place in our memories, because they are capitalized, and denote something special. You can screw up dilemna, and millenium, but those are just ordinary nouns, and noone really notices. To miss-spell a Proper Noun is instantly noticeable. People develop mnemonics to help them remember proper nouns, such as stein, beer stein, or stain, skidmarks in underwear, and that's what people have done before in relation to this whole Berenstein discovery. We've used mnemonics to help us remember things since early in our formative years, for everything, and that's how the human brain remembers things.....relations to other things. It's imprinted, because we train our brains that way. It's how we learn. It's how we know things.

For such a large percentage of people to be wrong about a spelling of a proper noun, myself included, tends to indicate a phenomena, of which I have yet to discern.

originally posted by: Box of Rain

originally posted by: Druid42
... Stain is the easy route for a memory pattern. Stein is odd, so why do we think that's the proper spelling?

No. Last names ending in s-t-e-i-n are relatively common. Last names ending in s-t-a-i-n are not.

Therefore, it seems more likely to make an assumption (and incorrect assumption in this case) that the last name of the writers of the books ended in s-t-e-i-n.

Someone else posted earlier that most of us as children were never exposed to names ending in -stein before Berenst_in reading-level age. I have to agree with that person's post (though I'm sorry I can't recall exactly where it is in these 37 pages.)

I'm also thinking that as kids learning how to read, we were probably more observant of letters, words, and pronunciations than as adults.