Frequency

There are several learned facets to speaking.

Men are raised with what can be called "dominance talking", using conversation to control, win debate, argue. Not just their speech, but their body language is noticeably aggressive. (Think "Foghorn Leghorn".) Content is far less important than pecking order.

Women are raised with "support talking", eliciting requests for emotional support and offering emotional support. Again, actual content is unimportant. (Think of the stereotypical gab fest.)

A third facet, common to both men and women is the content of their speech: data, emotional, or physical. This is both natural and learned.

"Data speech", is attempting to convey very accurate and specific information in a clear, concise, and ordered form as possible. It takes a great deal of focus on the part of both the speaker and the listener, and has severe limitations as far as accuracy goes.

"Emotional speech" attempts to convey broader lessons. It is far less accurate as far as data goes, instead idealizing events to clarify complex emotional lessons. Urban legends are the logical extreme of this.

"Physical speech" is less talking than a barrage of physical contact while talking. It is uncommon except with very physically-oriented people, who are trained against using it, as most other people interpret it as assault, rather than an effort at communication.

Here is an example at a track meet as told by an observer that I find interesting; frustrating lack-of-communication conversation between a physical guy, an emotional guy, and a data-oriented guy.
It was bizarre.The physical guy had run in a track meet.
The data guy asked him how it was. His answer was simplistic, and he acted it out, "Oh, we ran and ran and the other guys ran really hard and we ran and stuff!" The data guy was puzzled, and whipped out a bunch of statistical questions: who won? who was second place? what were their times? how many people were there?, etc.
The physical guy just looked at him painfully, with a "who cares?" expression on his face. He finally replied something like "I guess I won."So the data guy turned to the emotional guy and asked him about the race.
The emotional guy had been in the stands and talked about how exciting and thrilling it had been, with lots of emotional highs and lows, but "we" pulled through and won! Now it was the data guy's turn to be puzzled. Once again, he had no data to process, just subjective stuff. The emotional guy had no clue about the stats, but made some approximate guesses, which were unacceptable to the data guy.
Anyway, after watching this exchange, the three parted company, and I made it a point to talk to them alone. Each of the three expressed frustration that the other two didn't get the whole point of the race. For the runner it was the action, for the data guy it was the stats, and for the emotional guy it was for the thrill. I have seen better communication between people of different languages.

Another facet of speech is natural, what could be called "frequency". That is, a very 'buzzy' person has difficulty communicating with a very 'sluggish' person. The buzzy person tries to slow their own conversation down, and the sluggish person tries to speed theirs up. If the gap between the two is too great, they can't reach the same "frequency" and no communication happens.

Data, emotional, and physical communication have very different "frequency bands" in which they normally operate, and some people experience much difficulty jumping from one band to another. These, and other major natural and learned patterns of speech are very exclusive. Unless you are used to them, communication doesn't happen and you are faced with people you don't understand, apparently talking nonsense. Physical people often end up in jail, just for trying to say something.

So in looking or examining communication, it can be easy for one party to think that the other party understands or heard something in how it was said or meant to be understood, when it is entirely possible that they didn't.

Distraction falls into place here as well. Some feel like they can multi task, by this I mean; for one to read a paper, watch TV, and feel like they are listening is crazy. Often times the one talking starts getting distracted by looking at what the listener is looking at and forgets what the communication was about in the first place. Worse yet is when the listener interupts and says a quick retort of an outline almost of the content of the speakers intent, not always being accurate. Often times happening out of wanting a conversation to end. Very rude to say the least.

For someone to be on the same frequency and finish each others sentences, or being on the same plane of thought is wonderful. But to note the difference here of someone trying to insert a new idea or concept into a conversation not known to the listener yet needs to get the point across first, then to be on the same plane to finish each others thoughts in words as to discuss the new item brought up in the conversation.

Common courtesy of being a good listener and really caring what that person has to say speaks volumes.

This being said, when someone says how they have tried to tell someone something over many years but it was never understood, should have tried another frequency. As the listener doesn't realize that they are missing out on a potential important bit of news.

To be a good listener with patience, courtesy and understanding is a rarity. To be a good speaker on the right frequency knowing that you are understood I've learned now is a rarity as well.