Language Comprehension

Though all of these elements could be considered crucial to language comprehension, I find that vocabulary is more essential than the others. Put bluntly, without some understanding of words and their meanings, one cannot even begin to express their thoughts eloquently. For example, when children are first learning to speak, there is generally a lot of confusion/frustration for both the speaker and the listener, as the child lacks the vocabulary to effectively convey what he/she needs...caveat: I am aware that mental development also plays a key role in building vocabulary. There is a condition where that caveat will not work: learning a new language. For someone who is learning a language for the first time, it is difficult to both express thoughts and comprehend another person's speech without an adequate vocabulary. Also, not knowing the meaning of a word can lead to some embarrassing, entertaining, or even dangerous moments. For example, I spent a month in Spain and was trying to describe ice-fishing (sorry if you don't know what this is!) to my host family, but there is no word for ice-fishing in Spanish. My literal translation was "fishing over ice", but I messed up the word for ice (hielo) and said ice cream (helado), so my host family was very entertained by me.