coloraday“I think I hear 'Sunday' there.You must ...on Sunday.(maybe) ”
Hmm, it might be "Sunday", yes. Here comes a BIG problem that I've been wondering about for ages... And I'd like to find out more on this phenomenon soon.The problem is, I can sometimes hear different things, depending on what I expect to hear... and sometimes I find that it is possible to hear two different things at the same time.
At first, I understood something like this:
He woss kown drowned on sunday => He works kind of drowned on sunday???
I have no idea. But if I listen again and again focusing on certain sounds, a strange thing happens. And I can hear the first word in three different ways:
He woss...
You woss...
Here wass...
He, you, here? I listen with each of those different "versions" in mind, and each of them seems to "fit" equally good when I expect to hear it. Anyone have any ideas or suggestions?
Now I know this is normal and common when vowel sounds are involved: if there is a vowel sound that is between two vowels you know, you can hear that vowel in two ways, according to your set of phonemes. But when consonant sounds are involved, I get scared... consonants are more complex than vowels.
The truth is native speakers often understand only because they already know what to expect, not because they heard perfectly what was said. And "perception" seems to be more complicated than we think, and I posted an interesting video in another section, to avoid going off-topic (the video is at http://www.englishforums.com/English/McgurksEffect/lgrxq/post.htm)