The most promising research in this field comes from a collection of studies: To read up on
this, start with James L. McClelland, Julie A. Fiez, and Bruce D. McCandliss, “Teaching the /r/–/l/
Discrimination to Japanese Adults: Behavioral and Neural Aspects,” Physiology & Behavior 77.4
(2002): 657–662. It’s a fascinating study, and their results are really impressive. They brought
Japanese adults from terrible (roughly 50 percent) accuracy all the way up to 70–80 percent
accuracy in differentiating their locks from their rocks. The research subjects didn’t hear the L-R
distinction as accurately as a native speaker (and after interviewing the researchers, it became
clear that they’re pretty bummed about that), but from a language learning standpoint, it’s a huge
deal.
3
English operates under (a large set of) dependable rules: You can find a cool breakdown of the
English spelling rules into fifty-six simple rules at
Zompist.com/spell.html
. If you blindly follow
these rules, you can accurately predict the pronunciation of any English word with 85 percent
accuracy. Not bad for a language with seven different ways to pronounce “ough” (tough, cough,
plough, though, thought, through, and hiccough).
Chapter 4. Word Play and the Symphony of a Word
1
When forming images, it helps to have a dirty mind: Joshua Foer’s book is a wonderfully
written tour through the human mind, not to mention a fabulous story (Foer, Joshua. Moonwalking
with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. New York: Penguin, 2011).
Highly, highly recommended.
Chapter 5. Sentence Play
1
There’s a subtle grammar rule operating here: You might note that “mouse-infested” doesn’t
sound terrible, and indeed, Google NGrams (
books.google.com/ngrams/
) shows roughly similar
amounts of mice-infested and mouse-infested stories in English literature. Irregular plurals seem to
sound fine either way. However, with regular plurals, the rules become totally rigid. “Rats-
infested” just doesn’t exist in English.
2
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