La Comprensión

In Spanish class a few days ago, I was talking to my friend Sudheer. Since it's Spanish class, we're supposed to speak exclusively in Spanish, so I was doing my best to do so. After a fairly long-winded explanation of some grammatical concept or something, (I can't remember anymore...I really should write these things sooner!) he repeated what he had understood to be sure we were on the same page. I was trying to talk quickly to test my fluency, and he was missing a few key elements. He then (paraphrasedly) explained his method for understanding my Spanish: "Everyday I try to understand one more word of what you say. I'll find out how many words of each sentence I get today, and tomorrow I'll try to understand one more. Eventually, I'll be able to understand the entire sentence." Amused, I asked him how many words he had reached by that particular day. Holding up the appropriate number of fingers, he replied, "Cuatro."