They were talking about what they know, what they do all day, but listening to them in class, I felt my head ringing as if hit from time to time by rubber bullets: mispronounced words--vowels off register or substituted, accents out of place, consonants missing or distorted or inserted, endings chopped off. I felt dazed and amazed by the stream of these remarkable distortions.
From the context I was able to eliminate improbable possibilities, hazard reasonable guesses and get confirmations, but it's sobering to think how many people in the past might have heard the same fantastic words I did today, been puzzled as I was, and weren't able to decipher them, perhaps never asked, and so never learned.
How frustrating that must have been, unless, of course, everyone just accepted confusion as the norm and was resigned to setting aside a portion of mental bandwidth simply for wrangling clouds and chimeras. What a tax on mental energy that must levy! Let me help.
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