Funny, I was able to wring some sense out of it on second hearing just because I was primed to expect that there was something there. But it turned out not to be quite the right answer. Now that I have heard the big reveal, I can actually hear it both ways, my original, (slightly) mistaken interpretation, and the actual answer.
But it occurs to me that this is exactly how humans learn language. We start by hearing an idealized version, carefully enunciated by parents and primary school teachers, and then we generalize that to more sloppy, noisy renderings in real-life situations, movies, podcasts...
So this experience is reproducible in the large: listen to a foreign language. It's noise. Then learn that language and it stops being noise and takes on meaning. Like the small example, ee efshar lachzor yoter lahatchalah. (That's a latinized transliteration of a Hebrew phrase. Figuring out what it means is left as an exercise :-)
But it occurs to me that this is exactly how humans learn language. We start by hearing an idealized version, carefully enunciated by parents and primary school teachers, and then we generalize that to more sloppy, noisy renderings in real-life situations, movies, podcasts...
So this experience is reproducible in the large: listen to a foreign language. It's noise. Then learn that language and it stops being noise and takes on meaning. Like the small example, ee efshar lachzor yoter lahatchalah. (That's a latinized transliteration of a Hebrew phrase. Figuring out what it means is left as an exercise :-)