Ijus ruhlized tha ti dont speak Engluhsh

As someone who is just becoming an ESL teacher, I'm becoming aware of language in a way similar to a fish realizing that it's wet. Because I'm immersed in my own language, it's ubiquitous. Like a fish in water, I  have no awareness of my liguistic environment because it's such an integral part of my being. 

Something that has started to enter my awareness is the extent to which spoken language is nothing like the written word. In fact, they are two completely separate languages. Like every native speaker, I assume that speaking is just an oral rendition of what's written. But as I listen to my own language for the first time, I feel like I'm listening to a very foriegn tongue. 

For my students, I go up to the board and write the conjugation for the verb to be: 

I am

You are

He is

But as I say the words out loud for them, I hear a completely different sound than what those letters would indicate. As I read them to my students I hear myself saying:

I yam

You ware

He yiz

Then suddenly I'm aware of myself dropping these y's and w's everywhere. I'm peppering my entire vocabulary with these extra little sounds. 

I yasssume that the yextent to which the y yand w sounds begin to wenter into the spaces between the yuntterances I make is to wa foriegner very strange. 

See what I mean! I am speaking a strange language that I'm starting not to recognize. 

And then I break up words so that every syllable I say starts with a consonent so that asking something simple like, "Can I have a bit of egg?" becomes, "Ca ni ha va bi tuh vegg?" 

Seriously! I speak like that and if you listen to yourself you'll hear the same thing come out of your mouth. 

And it only gets more bizarre. I realize that an uh sound replaces numerous vowel sounds in words with more than two syllables. 

The ruhlization that uh ruhplacuhs numuhruhs vowuhl sounds is buhzarre. 

Not only yam I droppuhn the y yand w buht cuhmpletely yignuhruhn vowuhl sounds uhn gruntuhn my sentuhncuhs. 

Anifya havuhntauhready notuhced, I drop suhm ledders cuhmpletely, sluh ruthurs tughether, uhn turn allo duh t's intuh d's. 

The language we speak is not the English we write. They are completely different! It's a wonder that any forienger can understand us!