Marie

If he says that man's father is my father's son, surely he is holding a photo of his own son? Because he is his 'that man's father and he is also his own father's son? That was more complicated than I first imagined, hehe! Nice quote / riddle though: maybe we should start a thread on riddles and try to solve them?

As a rule, I try to practice decent grammar whenever I can, yet I'm somewhat laid back with others. It's up to the individual whether or not they decide to use proper grammar, but I do believe it gives a better impression of someone when they make the effort. However, I do get somewhat annoyed when establishments such as schools, hospitals, or government offices fail to use proper grammar, punctuation or spelling, etc. They really should know better... When learning a new language, though, I do believe grammar should take a back seat, so to speak. If you spend all your time trying to speak perfectly, you will no doubt lose all motivation, and give up before you are fluent. Plus, once you have learnt a certain amount, it will begin to come naturally; you will know when you say something "no, that doesn't sound right", at which point you can look up the grammar and perfect it. I think it's more important, when learning a new language, to simply make yourself understood. If your grammar is good enough that native speakers of the language can understand you, then you're doing well. There's no point boring yourself, learning every little rule, until you just don't feel like learning any more. It has to stay interesting...

I know it's not one of the above options, but I'd really love to learn Russian... Perhaps this could be an option for future expansions if there's enough interest? For now, I voted French, thinking it's one of the more popular modern languages; or at least in Britain, in schools, they tend to teach Spanish, French or German: one or more of those main 3, meaning it's more likely to find people to post in topics on these languages. It depends more on where most of the users are from though? I was thinking it'd be better to build up the forum with well-known languages that'll provoke a lot of response, before moving on to less 'popular' languages, and then inspiring the influx of people to learn them...

...when you forget a word/ phrase in your mother tongue, and have to resort to waving your arms around like a lunatic, saying it in every other language you know until you finally work it out or someone tries to guess what you're saying.... Has happened too many times for my liking.. People must think I'm crazy. I do agree with those that said about thinking and dreaming in the language you're learning; when it comes that naturally to you that you can't help yourself, :beaten:you know you've cracked it, so to speak.

Speaking of idioms being different in different countries (not as stupid as you think; don't worry!), in English there is the idiom for when it is persisting with rain (torrentially), that is "It's raining cats and dogs" However, just across the border in Wales, they have an idiom, meaning the same; "Mae'n bwrw hen wragedd a ffyn." ..meaning.. "It's raining old ladies and sticks." I admit: that's one of my ultimate favourites in Welsh idioms, but it is very interesting how each country puts their own unique twist and interpretation onto things, even as simple as the weather, and come out with something so different

I love this one! It's very true for some! One of my favourite quotes, though I don't know the author, is "The most compelling evidence we have that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is simply that none of it has tried to contact us!" Makes me chuckle every time, hehe! This is a great idea for a thread, I'll have to memorise several of these. Some are just amazing... Awe-inspiring. Thanks, guys.