I began, then, to hear ordinary sounds as if they were ‘French’, in the sense that common sounds took on the character and aural signature of ‘French-like’ utterances. The water dripping from the faucet, the sound of the onion being sliced, the scraping… suddenly, in a way I had never experienced before, the world began to sound like a language… but not the one I speak. Perhaps more surprising, I can now ‘summon’ this experience, and common sounds immediately become ‘French-like’ in my aural interpretations.