This may be off topic, but it's Paul's fault. The link to this
thread was in an email asking if sometimes ordinary words occasionally sound weird and foreign. Since there's not a thread for that, but many others are no doubt linking from the same email, and hoping everyone forgives the hijack:
Yes, Paul, ordinary common words sometimes sound weirdish to me too. Words I use all the time. Sometimes I just let the sounds play in my mind and wonder, "How did those particular sounds come to mean that particular thing? And I get the opposite, too, though no better founded in reason--sometimes sounds seem like they ought to mean the thing they do as an inherent quality of the sound.
I can't explain it.
It might be because I am super-SMART : ) and in love with language, always looking for a clever lyric and trying to write triple entendres into songs, etc.