Half the problems faced by a nonnative speaker of a language are about how hard the native speaker listening to them leans on their internalized expectations.

The fun part of this is that little kids are, effectively, nonnative speakers until a certain age. Example: My son said something about Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I’d have sworn he said they “can pee in a pipe.”

Turned out he was saying, “be in a pipe”—meaning, travel comfortably in sewer pipes. This use of “be” clashed with me normal English-listening templates.