Do you find some speakers difficult to understand? Do you avoid certain situations because you are worried about not understanding the speaker?

There are predictable things that happen when speakers speak quickly—words come together, consonants appear to disappear, vowels are weakened.

Through analysis of other speakers it is possible to train your ears to hear and understand "reduced" versions of certain words. Then after a while, you began to understand so much more so effortlessly.

E.g., the word "interesting" is mostly pronounced "intresting" but might also be pronounced in a way that sounds more like "instring".

In German, the word "zusammen" is usually pronounced "z'samm". If you don't realise this, you won't recognise it when you hear it.