You really do get used to it. First time I got into a light plane, I had exactly the same reaction as you - it was all gobbledegook. By the time I took my first

You really do get used to it. First time I got into a light plane, I had exactly the same reaction as you - it was all gobbledegook. By the time I took my first proper lesson, I'd started reading the textbook, and it was mostly making sense. Within a few hours I was fluent, and things like this recording made sense. The big thing is understanding the vocabulary, and the things they're likely to say. It's called the "pop-out effect" - once you know what you're looking for, it's much easier to find it. You can think of it in Bayesian terms - an increased prior on certain words and phrases makes them much quicker to detect. (I will also say that many people find American aviators/ATC much harder work. They use less standardised phraseology - perhaps because they don't have so many different native languages all crowded up into a small airspace. See if, eg, Amsterdam or Dublin is easier for you to understand.)