The "Lingual Double-take"

For my own purposes, I've coined this idiom. Maybe you've experienced this, too, and you can use it now. It is:

"The lingual double-take."

Let me explain:

When you're first learning a language, hearing it usually just sounds like a bunch of noise. Imagine, if you will, a sea of bubbles. Maybe there's a bubble machine somewhere, and all the bubbles are floating past you. This is the "noise" of language. Every once in a while, a purple bubble goes by. This is the one word you understood. But in a sea of bubbles, it doesn't really stand out, and in a moment it's gone.

A lingual double-take happens when, after you've gotten used to seeing bubbles and bubbles and bubbles, a big bunch of colorful balloons drifts by. Your mind, which was expecting only bubbles, has to take a moment to double check, and then you realize: holy shit, those were balloons! This is the lingual double-take: it's when, after all but tuning out the "noise," your mind says, "Hold on a second;" you pause to let your mind process, and you realize you understood something. Then everything is just bubbles again.

This happened to be a while ago when I was listening to the NHK Radio News. One day, just like every other, I heard them say, "NHK11になりました (NHK juu-ichi ni narimashita)." They say this every day, and I'd tuned it out like anything else. But on this particular day, something made me pause and I thought, "Wait: narimasu... I know that verb." I also know that the NHK news team is NHK 11. And that's when I started dying of laughter, because what they've been saying this whole time is:

"We have become the NHK 11 News."

It just sounds like they're a bunch of mild-mannered Japanese people by day, but at night they become... The NHK News Team (!!!) like a bunch of superheroes. I thought it was hilarious.

So I guess what I'm saying is: just when you thought you'd give up and zone out, your mind will prove to you how much you've been learning. Soon, we'll all be surrounded by balloons.