Sunday, August 10, 2014

Girl Wonder

I first saw this video more than 2 years ago, and it STILL blows my mind.


I've played Cranium and I humbly acknowledge that I pretty much (AKA: TOTALLY) ROCK at the      "Gnilleps" category where the contestant is required to spell a word backwards.  Even this can be a challenge at times, though.    In order to do this, I have to mentally "see" the word spelled out, then hold it in my mental vision while I carefully and deliberately spell it backwards...does that make sense?  That's the process I go through anyway.   Success is largely predicated on the ability to spell a word correctly in the first place and then the discipline to hold it in view while intentionally (and with some effort), reversing the letters.  The phenomenon in the video is light years beyond that!

Not only must she be a stellar speller (sequoia? kaleidoscope?), who visually "sees" the word spelled backwards, but her brain immediately coheres those letters into phonetic pronunciations which do NOT correspond to their forward pronunciation.  In other words, she isn't "listening" to the word and then "pronouncing" it in reverse sounds.  Words with 2 syllables have a backward pronunciation of 3 or 4 whose SOUNDS have no correspondence to the original pronunciation.    It is nothing short of baffling that her mind can instantly and simultaneously transpose the visual, as well as audibly interpret that visual.  

AMAZING.  The brain is AMAZING.