It took the narrator quite some time to understand that what he heard as ‘piper’, in fact, meant ‘paper’ and the phrase ‘mind the gap’ in the Tube. What do you think caused the problem?
It took the narrator quite some time to understand the differences in the words the problem for not understanding the language was he was not a native of U.S.A he belonged to Bengal where his mother tongue was Bengali and when he stayed in London he picked up British English which again is different from the American English.