K's Point of View: The Squid in Les Miserables

At the Brain Fit session last week, physiotherapist Cheryl Chia talked about the auditory part of our brains. She talked about how certain words only differ from each other by "milliseconds." For instance, the words "say" and "stay" differ only by 100 milliseconds. When we don't hear that "millisecond" of a difference - our brains go to work, putting in context clues for us to understand (and realize) exactly which word was said. For instance - if I said "will you stay with me?" You won't necessarily have heard exactly the word "stay" - but since you heard the rest of the sentence, you would have automatically put in "stay" there as that's the word that would have made sense with the rest of the sentence.

I experienced a perfect example of this "auditory" malfunction while watching the movie Les Miserables the other night. We were at the scene when Marius was asking Eponine who the blond girl in the hat was. In the midst of singing, and other sound effects... Eponine said, "Cosette."

K: Who's Posette?

At this point, the husband and I looked at each other, trying to keep straight faces. 

Me: It's Cosette, not Posette. That's the name of the girl wearing the hat.

K: Posette? That's her name?

Me: Cosette. KO-SET. Posette is different.

K: Oh.

Me: It's a nice name, isn't it?

And it went downhill from there.

K: Hmm. Yes. But Posette is nice too. (pauses to think). And it's yummy too.

To those who are confused - "pusit" is the word for squid in Filipino - and it's often pronounced "pu-set." There you go.