> never the "beach" because she's concerned she'll manage to make people think she said "bitch".
Is her native language Spanish?
It's really cool how you can have "blind spots" depending on your native language. To me, the difference between beach and bitch is huge, because my native language uses short and long vowels extensively, and there are tons of words that only differ in a single vowel length.
But at the same time, I have other blind spots in English. For example, I have to make an effort to remember to use sounding "s" and "j" where appropriate, and the lack of those is a dead give-away for identifying Swedish English speakers.
She could also be French, or a speaker of any other romance language, or really any language that doesn't have the vowel [ɪ]. For speakers of such languages, "beach" and "bitch," as well as "sheet" and "shit," can be very hard to distinguish from one another.
Is her native language Spanish?
It's really cool how you can have "blind spots" depending on your native language. To me, the difference between beach and bitch is huge, because my native language uses short and long vowels extensively, and there are tons of words that only differ in a single vowel length.
But at the same time, I have other blind spots in English. For example, I have to make an effort to remember to use sounding "s" and "j" where appropriate, and the lack of those is a dead give-away for identifying Swedish English speakers.