Why You Cannot Understand English

Say this whenever you do not understand English: ‘Please repeat that, using different words.’ Say using different words so they will not repeat the same sentence you did not understand.

The six usual reasons you cannot understand English are:

(1) English is always changing. We use idiomatic expressions most of the time. Nobody knows them all, not even native speakers of English. 

(2) Confusion. Confusion is a hook to catch your attention. Advertisers use confusion to make you stop and look—and buy something. For this reason we see a steady stream of meaningless abbreviations and misspellings coming from merchants.

(3) Slang. Another reason we see incomprehensible messages is because people are trying to be cool, to use a slang word. If you don’t know what cool means, type ‘What does cool mean?’ into your search engine.

Money Saving Tip: Never waste your money taking a class in idioms or slang expressions. By the time you have memorized a list of words and phrases, nobody will be using them anymore. They will be out of date.

(4) Accents. If he has a Spanish accent and you are Korean, it will be difficult for you to understand his English. Accents may cause his vowels to sound different. You simply may not be able to understand one sentence he is saying. Even native speakers of English have a hard time understanding people with heavy accents. For this reason, students of English may want to work with accent reduction tutors.

(5) You Cannot See the Person. Experts in communication say that 70 percent of the message comes from seeing the other person, the visual part. We understand each other best when we can see each other’s facial expressions, body, and hand gestures.  Making eye contact is also important to good communication.

(6) The Other Person Does Not Want to Be Understood. Communication is a two-way street. If you cannot understand somebody, maybe he does not want to be understood. If someone is speaking in a vague or incomprehensible manner, just try to understand the basic or essential part.

 Copyright © 2013 Barbara A. English         All rights reserved.