I’m a native English speaker with a background in phonetics and a silly brain. I speak several languages very poorly. :) Rather like Larry Wall: > I started t

I’m a native English speaker with a background in phonetics and a silly brain. I speak several languages very poorly. :) Rather like Larry Wall: > I started trying to teach myself Japanese about 10 years ago, and I could speak it quite well, because of my phonology and phonetics training–but it’s very hard for me to understand what anybody says. So I can go to Japan and ask for directions, but I can’t really understand the answers!