Understanding is easy... if you already know it

Almost everyone in this country, or most of the people we come into contact with everyday, speak English. But this does not mean that we can understand everybody just because they are speaking English. Regional dialects, accents, slang, vocabulary, and conditions can all make understanding someone speaking the same language as us easier or harder. Sometimes, there can be an accent, but because the vocabulary is familiar, the accent does not change our level of understanding. One excellent example of this is in my calculus class. The professor is Chinese and although he speaks English, he has an accent and his grammar and pronunciation are often not quite correct. But I understand perfectly what he says everyday in class. This is because I know the vocabulary that he is going to use. I expect him to use words like "derivative" and "integral." So, even if these words are not pronounced exactly as I say them or hear them, I know what he is trying to say, so I can understand him completely and correctly. It does not matter that he has a think accent and does not speak correct English all of the time, because I know the vocabulary and thus I understand his language.

Differences in regional dialects and regional slang or vocab can make conversations slightly confusing. When speaking with someone from a different region with numerous differences in language, the phrase "Wait! What did you say?" might be heard quite often. It only slightly slows the conversation down, but it is always interesting to hear how people from other regions speak. I remember a few years ago when my cousins from Idaho were visiting. We were just talking about who knows what, when one of my cousins said "Roof." But she pronounced is like "ruff," like a dog barking noise. We then argued about the real pronunciation of roof. We then decided to figure out what other words we say differently or have different words for. Another difference that we found was that here we call a little river-type-of-water flowing in our backyard a stream, while my cousins from Idaho would call it a creek. Except, they pronounced it like "crick" like a cricket. When conversing with my cousins, we have more difficulty because of the differences in how we pronounce things and the vocabulary of words that we use, not because there is an accent. My cousins do not sound much different from me when I speak. It is much easier to understand when the vocabulary is known, even when there is an accent present.