Columbus and Grand Island are home to a large and ever-increasing Hispanic population, and, while my Spanish is very poor, I try at least to pronounce peoples’ names properly.
Thankfully, the rules for Spanish pronunciation are fairly straightforward; so as long as I can see a name in print, I can pronounce it with something resembling accuracy.
One of the conventions of Spanish pronunciation is the double “l”, which makes the “y” sound, as in “yarn”.
So I am used to seeing double ls and reading Y.
What I am not used to is what happened Saturday evening as I drove home from work.
I saw a llama sitting in a yard and I thought…
Perhaps I have mentioned before my affinity for the written word; for instance, how I rarely understand movies unless they are accompanied by subtitles? But with all my affinity for the written word, I still think verbally. I think in spoken words rather than in written words.
Except for this time.
This time, I saw the llama and my brain thought in written form.
“Huh, there’s a llama in that llard.”
Yep. That’s right.
When I “read” what my brain had written, I read it as “There’s a lah-muh in that yard”, but I spelled it as written above.
Weird. Just weird.
The things our minds do.
My apologies for all my blog readers who are also Facebook friends who have thus been forced to hear this story twice. Have I mentioned that I’m experiencing a bit of bloggers’ block? Feel free to ignore everything I write until I emerge from this funk. Actually, I take that back. I’d still really, really appreciate your interaction. Maybe it would help me come out of the funk faster?
That’s pretty funny — not only that you thought that way, but that you caught it.