Having an understanding

When people pronounce words, they are pretty unaware of the sounds they are producing.  I walked into a class not long ago where the students had just learned the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).  In the IPA, each sound has a separate symbol, so it is much easier to isolate sounds than using the English alphabet which duplicates sounds for letters.  They were practicing words like pen and pin, then and than, where the spelling is different, having fun discovering how they really pronounced the words.  People think they are pronouncing the words differently when in reality, their dialects produce them in exactly the same way, sounding the same.  In speech usage, context determines which word is meant, not pronunciation, since they are pronounced the same.  Din and den is another pair among the many that could be cited here.

It's not true just in English either.  I have heard many a Spanish speaking person say Spanish pronunciation is easier than English pronunciation because each vowel only has one sound.  Of course, that is not true, just a perception or a learned precept.  Para, for example, has only one sound in some dialects, but has two in much of the regional Spanish in Texas.  The second a has a schwa sound rather than the mid-vowel pronunciation of the first vowel.  The word jabon, too, contains a dialect variant for the first sound of the word.  Some speakers pronounce it like an h in English while others pronounce like the Greek letter chi, the overly aspirated, non-plosive guttural consonant akin to k in English.

As it pertains to values and notions, I find that many people are unaware of their world view in comparison to those around them.  Perception and masks (like regional dialects) exist in various areas of life, affecting our world views, and people are blind to them.  One of the real trademarks of an education is being able to see something through more than one filter or mask.  That helps in establishing views and values that allow for more than one perception.  It prevents being notional about matters.  It allows for tolerance among friends and acquaintances.  It also helps us to choose sounder ideas about our own views from the different views that exist.  Understanding is a good medicine for many situations.  Awareness of why differences exist is the interim step to having an understanding.