In high school, I took ancient history. Looking back I think I would have enjoyed modern history a lot more, but it wasn't exactly offered at the time from memory. I could be wrong.
The class was small, about six of us, and the majority of us were girls, so we were all in this one small room which allowed us to have a lot of help if we weren't understanding something. We started doing this module on Alexander the Great and were learning about his childhood when this little mispronunciation happened.
On this particular day, we were looking at the story where Alexander wins his horse Bucephalus. If you don't know the story, Bucephalus was offered to Alexander's father for a large sum, only there was a catch. Bucephalus wouldn't let anyone ride him, he was spooked a lot and anyone who managed to climb up onto his back was thrown. Alexander's father was unable to ride him and wouldn't take the bait, but Alexander had taken a liking to the horse.
He made a wager with his father, that his father would pay for the horse if Alexander was able to ride the horse without being thrown. If he failed, Alexander would pay for the horse out of his own pocket.
The people around him were shocked as the young prince walked towards the horse and spoke to him in soft tones, calming him. As he did he changed the position the horse stood in. You see, as Alexander had been watching Bucephalus he had noticed that the horse was spooked by shadows. As an added precaution, Alexander dropped his cloak and in front of everyone he climbed up onto the horse's back and was able to ride him.
Alexander's fathers was impressed by the feat and agreed to buy the horse for him.
As part of this class, we had to read copies of texts from that time. So I was just focusing on making sure what I was reading made sense, I didn't realise that when I pronounced Bucephalus as Buce-Phallus it was wrong until my teacher started laughing. None of us realised what it was as funny as what it was. We waited a few minutes until he had calmed down, he corrected me and when we asked what was so funny, he told us to look up the word phallus.
I brushed it off until the next lesson when one of my classmates looked at me and said that I had majorly mispronounced the name. That day, I went to the library and looked up the word phallus and I realised that I had renamed Alexander the Great's horse after a penis.
Since that day I have always remembered to pronounce Bucephalus as Boo-cef-a-lus but I will never forget the day that I called him Buce-phallus.
Until next time,
(aka - Sophie)
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