How&#8230;does this even work?
<p>Here is a curious fact.</p>
<p>My wife Cathy is using Duolingo to learn German; she wants to be able to read sources on Iron Age and Viking costume in the original.</p>
<p>Duolingo takes her through a <em>lot</em> of pronunciation drills.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve learned something by listening to her &#8211; which is that somehow, somewhere, I have internalized a very precise understanding of German phonology and phonotactics.  As in, I not only know right pronunciation from wrong, I give her detailed advice on how to match Duolingo&#8217;s model speaker that we can both tell is correct.</p>
<p>What makes this weird is that I don&#8217;t speak German. At all. Nor have I ever lived where it&#8217;s spoken; I&#8217;ve visited Germany once, German-speaking Switzerland once, and that&#8217;s it.</p>
<p>This raises questions in my mind:</p>
<p>1. How the fuck?  I mean, I suppose it&#8217;s related to my knack for generating names in the style of any specified language, and I could handwave about Markov-chain models, but&#8230;how the fuck?</p>
<p>2.  What dialect of German have I templated on?  Could there be any way to tell?</p>
<p>3.  What other entire language phonologies have I swallowed &#8230; without &#8230; me &#8230; actually &#8230; noticing &#8230;</p>
<p>4.  Does this happen to other people?</p>
<p>The human brain is a very odd thing.</p>
