I kind of had to change my name to Walt or Wally in Japan because too often when I said my name is Walter, too many people were surprised and asked me “Mizu“? Lol
That must be tricky. No one confuses Walt for "What?' "Nani" or Wally for "Warui?" "Bad?" Here, I have had people mishear Nakamura for McNamara and expect me to be an Irishman.
yeah I think that happened a couple of times but Walt Disney is a well-know and well-regarded name, so I got some “cool!“ “kakkouii” reactions by kids on my name.
actually in Toronto in elementary school in the late 50s early 60s the kids would laugh at me because I had the same name as Walt Disney and the image was that was just stuff for even younger kids. Then there was the popular kids book “Walter the lazy mouse” I got called that a few times lol
oh that’s a very interesting phenomenon, confusing Nakamura and McNamara.
that must be related to the mind hearing what it expects to hear, and not hearing what it doesn't expect.
Have you ever gotten “muranaka”?
just a couple of years ago at the school I was working at part time, the head English teacher was Nakayama, but one time in his presence I called him Yamanaka. I noticed right away and said sorry, I must be a bit dyslexic.
I've never had muranaka, but I have had a package address Wakanura. Given that Nakayama and Yamanaka are both common names that would be an understandable inversion.
I read your cartoon about the connections game, I didn’t know about it so I tried it on the New York Times site, it was quite fun :-)
looking at the four words you missed and you wondering why you missed them, maybe it has to do with those words being part of proper nouns, place names?
A few weeks ago I was trying to transcribe a sentence spoken in an interview and I just couldn’t get one word, which turned out to be “France“.
Some years ago we did a little research about how well native speakers and Japanese high-level English speakers were able to hear and transcribe spoken conversations using sentences in scripts from the TV series friends, one sentence contained a persons name “Steve“ and another sentence had the city name “Paris“; those words were almost impossible for the native English speakers to catch, the only reason we could think of was because proper names are difficult to catch when they’re not heard in any relatable context.
I love the Sunday illustration
Thanks!
I hear Yanny.
I kind of had to change my name to Walt or Wally in Japan because too often when I said my name is Walter, too many people were surprised and asked me “Mizu“? Lol
That must be tricky. No one confuses Walt for "What?' "Nani" or Wally for "Warui?" "Bad?" Here, I have had people mishear Nakamura for McNamara and expect me to be an Irishman.
yeah I think that happened a couple of times but Walt Disney is a well-know and well-regarded name, so I got some “cool!“ “kakkouii” reactions by kids on my name.
actually in Toronto in elementary school in the late 50s early 60s the kids would laugh at me because I had the same name as Walt Disney and the image was that was just stuff for even younger kids. Then there was the popular kids book “Walter the lazy mouse” I got called that a few times lol
oh that’s a very interesting phenomenon, confusing Nakamura and McNamara.
that must be related to the mind hearing what it expects to hear, and not hearing what it doesn't expect.
Have you ever gotten “muranaka”?
just a couple of years ago at the school I was working at part time, the head English teacher was Nakayama, but one time in his presence I called him Yamanaka. I noticed right away and said sorry, I must be a bit dyslexic.
I've never had muranaka, but I have had a package address Wakanura. Given that Nakayama and Yamanaka are both common names that would be an understandable inversion.
I read your cartoon about the connections game, I didn’t know about it so I tried it on the New York Times site, it was quite fun :-)
looking at the four words you missed and you wondering why you missed them, maybe it has to do with those words being part of proper nouns, place names?
A few weeks ago I was trying to transcribe a sentence spoken in an interview and I just couldn’t get one word, which turned out to be “France“.
Some years ago we did a little research about how well native speakers and Japanese high-level English speakers were able to hear and transcribe spoken conversations using sentences in scripts from the TV series friends, one sentence contained a persons name “Steve“ and another sentence had the city name “Paris“; those words were almost impossible for the native English speakers to catch, the only reason we could think of was because proper names are difficult to catch when they’re not heard in any relatable context.
That reminds me of the weird Yanny vs Laurel audio trick https://www.vox.com/2018/5/16/17358774/yanny-laurel-explained