Weirdly enough, for me it works as advertised for words in my native language (Italian, if it matters), but it doesn't seem to work at all in English (or at least, if it works it does so slowly enough that I got bored with repeating random words to myself before it happened).

I'm just musing around; but perhaps it might be related to me having learnt English words (and the association between their sound and their meaning) much later in my life and in a more formal, less "unconscious" way?

I'd be curious to see if other bilingual people notice the same, or if that's just me being weird.