The story about 'cold' vs 'called'.

Last Friday, I was on the way to have dinner with a half bunch of students after Fee's open house. It was a quite cold and windy day compared to a couple of days previous. I overheard one of Korean students talking to another. "!@#$% called" he said, "called who?" I interupted their conversation. But shortly after I listened to him more about the story, I realized he meant it was cold.
That story reminded me of my story three years ago. It was this time of year on cold and snowy day. I just got in my friend's car to head to practice and said. "it's cold/kɔld/". My friend said, "called who?" it was the same lines as the Korean guy, haha. I didn't know why my friend misunderstood me at that time. Now I know why it happened. This is the common mistake for Korean students who learn English, especially this time of year with cold weather; should say and hear the word cold many times every day . Since we don't have diphthong vowels, the second sound of which is /w/, such as /aw/ as in bow or /ow/ as in cold or as in holy cow /howlikaw/. In many cases, it doesn't really matter to get a main point of a message but in this case, producing /ɔ/ for /ow/ caused misunderstanding. It might cause something else such as communication breakdown or an awkward moment depending on situations or who you speak to if you speak to a person who you do not really know or have not talked each other before. Without any background information, it is not that easy to guess a main point when second language learners make a mistake. However, Some are sensetive enough to their mistakes, so they use different strategies to cope with that situations and they finally get their message accross successfully without communication breakdowns.
According to the book I read (Teaching Pronunciation), mispronunciation for vowels is main cause of foreign accent. Regardless of all possible problems, it is inevitalble for the second language learners to have foreign accents, especially adults learners like me; I have been learning and speaking English since age of 32. There is no simple solution to get rid of them but if you keep practicing, talking, and interacting with people, you can reduce your foreign accent. Personally, I think it is okay to speak with foreign accents as long as people understand you. It sometimes depends on who you hang out with, though. There are some people who are familar with foreign accents but some are not who have a problem to understand people who have an accent. English is not just a language for American, Canadian, and British people anymore. It is used by many people in the globe. It's meaningless to talk about foreign accents too much in that sense but there is a standard accent which is used by majority. Thus, I can say it is good to have a standard like accent to make your friends' life easier.