>> That's really mental...
> 
> That's because the human brain is much faster at pick'n'mix from a huge 
> look up table than following grammar rules to form phrases.

The human brain's power of associative memory is truly astonishing.

For example, how many people do you know? Or rather, how many people's 
faces do you recognise? It's a way bigger number than you think. Just 
think about how many famous actors or politicians you'd recognise by 
face (even if you can't remember anything else about them) and you have 
a really big number. Just look at one of these faces and typically 
within a few seconds you've remembered who they are. That's a pretty 
fast index lookup for a machine with a 200 MHz clock speed. ;-)

On the other hand, it doesn't already work right. Sometimes utterly 
unrelated things become associated. For example, my brain has an 
abnormality where the word "normally" registers as "tourmaline". 
Similarly, sometimes "Pacific" registers as "specific". I have no idea 
whether normal brains do this...

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