Simple Test
Count the "F"s in the following text:
"FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-
IC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE
EXPERIENCE OF YEARS..."
How many have you counted? Post your first answer immediately, and also say whether or not English is your native language.
<<I count 6>>
Oh, I am native as well
6, native. Of course, I've seen this thing before, and I think it fooled me the first time.
It's the "of" which we read as "uhv".
It's no surprise if non-native speakers do better on this, if you read up on the reason behind it we native speakers are bound to fare worse. We simply don't register the word 'of' because we see it so often, just skim over it as a linking word, and don't see it as a word in the same way as we might see a noun, adverb or adjective. Non-native speakers meanwhile are more likely to analyse every word, and think about grammar and as such will much more likely 'see' the word 'of'.
A measure of a truly good non-native speaker would be to score 3!
3, almost native (I speak Thai at home, so technically, that is my native language).
3 to start with, then 6 upon closer inspection
4; missed the first and second "of."