Sound

I still think sound is the most important component of language. From what we've learned about two of the three (syntax and phonetics) I think phonetics makes the most difference in how language is interpreted. Syntax can be learned and vocabulary can be memorized, but new sound patterns are still very difficult to learn and produce over a short period of time. For example, Americans who live in Britain usually can pick up on the different words for things and the different sentence structure very quickly, but it usually takes years for them to lose their American accent.
Besides being the most important to understanding language, sound is what makes it unique. Without accents, everyone who spoke a certain language would sound the same and it would be no fun.

Lexical Differences

So I've been trying to keep track of lexical differences in my little notebook, but I often forget them by the time I run to write them down, because I don't always carry my notebook with me. SO far, I've encountered the "pop" vs. "soda" debate many times and heard a few more distinct ones. A little while ago, someone asked for the "flipper" and I did not know that meant "remote control."

One of my favorites was in my math section when a British English speaker asked to have a example explained. The T.A. said that she would explain ti and go in depth into another problem as well. He said "Splendid!" and the whole class turned, looked at him and said "What?!?" He repeated himself and people in the class slowly realized what he meant after he said, "What, you guys don't say splendid?" I think he was a little embarrassed and I have not heard him say splendid again, unfortunately.

Most of the lexical items I have noticed people getting confused by have been words (mostly having to do with food), not phrases or sayings.

Dialect Experiment

I would like to see if someone's dialect can be detected by how they look when they speak. If I could run the experiment, I would videotape people with different regional accents and remove the sound from the video. I would have the participants try to guess the region of the speaker by how they look when they talk and move their lips.

A variation to this could be to let the participants listen to the sound first and then try to match it to the video. The examples would have to be all the same gender and probably all the same race and age so the participants do not guess based on those characteristics. I'd be interested to see if people are accurate in this or not...