I encountered this a while ago, and it's still astonishing that it's possible to hear such different things.
"Brain" and "green" are so similar that mistaking one for the other is not interesting. The really interesting pair is "storm" and "needle" — they seem wildly different.
I think what's going on is that the "ee" vowel sound and the hissing sound of an "s" both have a lot of high frequencies. It might be that an "ee" from a high-pitched speaker sounds similar to an "s" from a lower-pitched speaker, so the interpretation depends on what you infer the speaker's vocal frequency range to be.
And then when you notice that "needle" and "needo" sound almost the same, the "o" in "storm" is not that much of a stretch. "eedle" ~= "eeto" ~= "sto".
"Brain" and "green" are so similar that mistaking one for the other is not interesting. The really interesting pair is "storm" and "needle" — they seem wildly different.
I think what's going on is that the "ee" vowel sound and the hissing sound of an "s" both have a lot of high frequencies. It might be that an "ee" from a high-pitched speaker sounds similar to an "s" from a lower-pitched speaker, so the interpretation depends on what you infer the speaker's vocal frequency range to be.
And then when you notice that "needle" and "needo" sound almost the same, the "o" in "storm" is not that much of a stretch. "eedle" ~= "eeto" ~= "sto".