limon

That's a hard one, I really love short stories. Off the top of my head, I'd go for "Fondly Fahrenheit" by Alfred Bester in the older stories category, and "The Paper Menagerie" as a more modern entry.

Well, banana is a West African word originally, I think. So I suspect the English only got it from the French after the French borrowed it from one of their colonial possessions.

Doubtful. The issue here isn't that he was even that prolific (37 plays, 154 sonnets), it is that he was prolific, consistently good, and popular at the right time to influence a whole culture that was on the ascendance. The beginning of England as we know it, essentially, and the English language and literature as its own thing. But more than that, there is simply no way that our post-moveable type, post-printing press, post-universal literacy could have a single person produce such a huge *percentage* of the culture. For example, Agatha Christie is credited as being the best selling 20th Century author, but if you look at her best selling book, And Then There Were None, it shares its 1940 publication year with For Whom the Bell Tolls, Native Son, The Power and the Glory, and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. And that isn't including hundreds of lesser known (or less familiar to me) novels, plus plays, poems, and short fiction. Plus movies and popular music, and now we have the internet on top of that. There is no way to gain the sort of share that would allow that big of an influence nowadays.

Y de vez en cuando; balompié!

Awesome. That's one of the fun things about English, it is full of other languages!

Just make sure that you have people to practice with regularly, and it shouldn't be a problem. Depending on the area you're moving to, it should be pretty easy to do that, but I don't think age makes as much difference as time and lack of use does

The only correct version is "a lot". Think of it this way; it is the same thing as saying "a bunch" or "a ton". The "lot" in question is a unit of measurement and needs an article. You dont want "aton" or "abunch" of money, or "alot" of money. You want A ton, A bunch, A lot, or A load of it There is also a funny and helpful webcomic about this; http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

Blazing Saddles has a good, if a bit crude, joke about it that is one of my favorites in the movie.

Dreaming in it, definitely. Or watching something in that language, and then being unable to recall if you saw it in the native language or dubbed.

You eventually think in whatever language you use the most, like with most anything the brain needs to reinforce things to remember them, that's why we all forget our highschool math and so on My brother and I are just a couple of years apart in age grew up speaking both English and Spanish. I moved away and now my English is fluent and my Spanish rusty, whereas he has a hilariously thick Spanish accent when he speaks English. Neither of us gave up the second language completely, and it has only been 20 years, but it is a significant change. In my personal experience, you mainly lose vocabulary and pronunciation. Comprehension is still fine (though probably bolstered by consuming Spanish movies, books, and so on) but I have a harder time recalling the right words. However the underlying grammar seems to be fine as well, irregular verbs will trip me up but sentence structure or gendering, for example, remain normal.

Cuentame Como Paso is a good one, it's long and set during the transition but not too outrageous or outlandish like a telenovela

If you're on an iOS smartphone, you may want to look into apps. There is one for RNE (Radio Nacional de España) for starters. TuneIn should also let you access stations from all over the world.

A friend of mine swore that early morning children's programs were the best. Sesame Street and the like are aimed at language learners, after all, just little ones! Eventually she graduated to turning on the local news in the morning instead, some things were too complicated at first, but in the US the local newscasters language level is usually pretty clear and basic, and they tend to convey things in short sentences followed by video of whatever they're describing.

I've been having problems with it crashing in iOS7... has anyone else experience this? It seemed to be fine before I upgraded.

Hmm, never heard buffalo. You can be stubborn as a mule. Strong as an ox. You can also be bull-headed. Or you can just be a jackass (one of my favorite American insults).

It even has accents! http://www.handspeak.com/study/culture/index.php?byte=a&ID=3

One I like that is rarely used anymore is "tight". You mostly only hear it in old gangster movies

I rarely use LOL, usually I resort to emoticons instead. But it does have its uses, I think it's just the equivalent of the word "like" in Calfornia-speak, it's necessary but easy to abuse

Yeah, that's what it means. Or "c'est la vie" if you're feeling fancy

I agree, it's an incredibly valuable resource, and I feel like they've done an excellent job with their website.

I think the ease or difficulty can also depend a lot on what your native language is. If you're coming from a language that has very different rules than English, that's gotta make it harder.

"The" isn't a verb, it's a definite article, but leaving it out of a phrase is still a big deal so I totally understand correcting it

I'd always heard this was a derivation from "spirit and image", since the phrase predates knowledge of things like DNA. But either way it works wonderfully.

It's interesting, because psychologically the very existence of antonyms can lead you to thin of things in those terms and search for opposites where they don't even exist. When I was very little I thought Spanish was the opposite of English, because I spoke both and 'knew' everything had an opposite.

That makes perfect sense. But I'm going to continue using the 'ept' out of sheer stubbornness ;D