That's probably because you "read" PHP in almost the same way that you would read a page of text. That is, you really don't have to think about what the letters and words mean individually, they all meld together "automatically" into meaning.

Probably, you can "think" in PHP, much as you might think in a foreign language after becoming very proficient in day-to-day usage.

I'm a l-o-o-o-ng way from there. But one of these days, I'd say 2015 or so, I'll start seeing the pieces begin to fit together...

Dave