Learning only from ears

I suspect It would be very different if you learned English only from ears and not from reading.
When I took a taxi in Denver, US, the driver was from Sudan, Africa. He said
"Five マネット".
"Sorry, five what?" I asked, thinking it was "money" or something money-related since the "ト" was pronounced weakly.
"You don't know マネット ?"
"No I am afraid not."
"マ・ネ・ッ・ト, time." He said clearly and angrily.
"Oh, ミニットゥ?"
"No マネット".
"OK, OK I understand, it will take 5 マネット to the hotel, right?"
"Yap."
He heard minute as "マネット". Probably he learned the word "minute" from his ears and tried to reproduce what he heard faithfully borrowing similar vowels and consonants from his mother tongue.
On the other hand, the Japanese tend to pronounce words as they read. Since we learn Roman letters(ローマ字), we can read English, fortunately and unfortunately. Fortunately because it gives us a feeling that we are surely learning something. Unfortunately because this reading is a bit far from English pronunciation. " ミニットゥ" is also funny because "mi" sounds more like "め", still different though.
As for yesterday's joke, Jamaica, I was really surprised when suiren gave us the right answer and passerby also suspected it was the answer. I guessed no Japanese could relate "Jamaica" to "Did you make her" since they are spelled so differently. If you learned English all from your ears you could find the answer more easily. Yes when they are spoken quickly they sound like the same. "did you" sounds like "ja" as in "how ja do it?"
The riddle. The answer is "a newspaper". Guess why.