This TED Talk talks about our brains and conscious reality. At ~6’00”, the speaker shows us an example of how we perceive reality with audio samples.

It is very similar to how a language learner perceives his/her new target language.

Remember when you’re hearing a phrase where you can’t distinguish anything, and it just seems like noise. Then you’re going to read this phrase. And after listening to the audio again, it has suddenly become clearer.