Daedalus

T. S. Eliot's poem 'The Hollow Men' has a few as well:

Oxymorons exist in other languages as well. "Random order" is one example that is also known in Dutch, and likely as well in other languages (since it just means the order type is 'random', as opposed to 'alphabetical order' or 'order of appearance' etc.). I'm sure there are some that are only known in English, or a select number of languages, and that there are others that do not exist in English, but the overall concept is the same.

I already linked to that page in the OP. If you try to watch those videos, you will see that several episodes in the playlist are no longer available. You will have to search for them yourself. But if you're interested in English language, it'll be worth it

Fewer and less are comparatives of the words few and little. Wherever you use few, you would use fewer and where you use little, you would use less, I think. So you can say: "I have a few books," therefore: "I have fewer books." But this is obviously wrong: "I have little books," people would think you mean the size. "I have less books," is wrong because you can not use little in this sentence. On the other hand, you can say: "I have little time today," so it's also right to say: "I have less time." And of course, it would not make sense to say: "I have few time," as you cannot just count 'time', and so it's also wrong to say: "I have fewer time." You can count minutes of course, so instead of saying you have little time, you can say you have a few minutes, but as time goes on, you'll have fewer and fewer minutes left and less time to discuss things.

I didn't know there was a difference between American and British English in the commas. In Dutch, the rule is the same as in British English. However, there's also something called the serial comma, which can be used in case of ambiguity. For example, the sentence: "We invited our neighbours, Jane and Pete." Can be interpreted as though the neighbours are Jane and Pete, but it can also mean that we invited the neighbours, as well as Jane and Pete. The serial comma can help in this case: "We invited our neighbours, Jane, and Pete." Now, Jane and Pete are separated by the comma, so they cannot be interpreted as being the neighbours. There's a lot more to it, check the Wikipedia page for more examples.

It does make sense if you know where the name comes from. Oui is French and ja is German, both meaning yes. So oui is pronounced wee and ja is pronounced yah, so ouija is pronounced wee-yah, although more often you'll hear it as wee-jah. But if you think that's weird, why is geoduck pronounced gooey-duck?

Yeah, I struggle with 'th' as well, but I'm trying I think I'm already doing better than a year ago. Especially a word like 'months'. I usually leave out the 'th' completely there. Also, I'm having problem with 'require'. We pronounce the 'r' differently in Dutch, so when I try it in English, it comes out like 'wequiwe'.

I think it's 'bring' when the thing you're bringing is the purpose of the trip. "Bring the dog to the vet" implies the dog has to be checked out. But "Take the dog to the vet", you go to the vet for something else, and just happen to have the dog with you.

It's actually called 'SMS language', 'text speak', or 'txt-speak' (or something similar). I find it annoying in words like gr8, or u instead of you, but I do use abbreviations like afaik, iirc, imo, simply because that's more accepted.

I've had English classes in high school, it is mandatory. But I've learnt much more just by using the internet and watching films and tv. However, I've really started learning it, not just words and grammar, but also speaking, when I moved to the UK. There's a lot of things you take for granted in your native language, just small ways of saying something, that you can't learn unless you actively use the language.

Not being a native speaker, I don't know that many, but as part of my integration process in the country, I was made to watch The Mighty Boosh. I particularly remember the word 's**tfaced' as synonym for being drunk.

I'd never heard of this before, it's quite interesting. Would you say 'pen' and 'sword' in 'the pen is mightier than the sword' are metaphors? Can they be both metaphor and metonym? I've been trying to think of more examples. Could you say a phrase like 'my computer is rendering a video' fits in this category? After all, it is not the entire computer doing the work, it's a combination of program and CPU, but many parts are doing nothing to contribute. And the video is actually just a collection of 1s and 0s, stored in a certain electronic way on a drive, which when decoded correctly is a sequence of images. One can get quite technical with this.

I've played on it a lot several years ago. I donated a good amount of rice as well. After a while, I just felt like I had seen all the words, so there was nothing new for me. Also, the words were relatively easy to guess, you could just break them down. A word like, for example, anthropomorphism is easy to guess if you know that anthropo- words are all about humans in one way or another. I'll have to see if they changed much.

Have you heard about this? What do you think? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/10280244/Translation-table-explaining-the-truth-behind-British-politeness-becomes-internet-hit.html

We have that in the Netherlands as well, we call it 'dictee'. Most often used in schools, but once a year, around Christmas time, some of the biggest newspapers together with a Dutch and a Belgian tv network organise one. It's written by a celebrity Dutch writer, usually with a very high difficulty. Half of the contestants are celebrities, the other half are 'normal people', who scored the highest in an initial test.

In Dutch: Hond (dog): woef Haan (cock): kukeleku Kikker (frog): kwaak Geit (goat): mèh / bèh Kat (cat): miauw Koe (cow): boe

An onomatopoeia is a word that imitates a sound. These are often animal sounds, and sometimes animals get even named after their own sound, but of course it's not just limited to animals. It's important to know that different languages can use different onomatopoeias for the same sound. For example, in English we would say a cow makes a 'moo' sound, but in Dutch, cows are said to make a 'boo' sound. Some examples: woof, cuckoo, tick, boom, boing, ka-ching. Do you know of any more, and how they are different in English and in other languages?

Interestingly, the TV cartoon show Futurama is set in the year 3000. One of the things they did, hardly noticeable, is make minor adjustments to the language. One of them is 'ask', they changed that into 'aks'. Which reminds me of something else, I can't stand it when people get 'etcetera' wrong. When abbreviated, many writ 'ect.' when it should be 'etc.' and, probably because of that, a lot of people pronounce it 'ect-cetera'.

Strange enough, I would go for 'spelled' instead of 'spelt', but I would favour 'misspelt' over 'misspelled'. And while I would use 'lit' more commonly, I do prefer to write 'highlighted'.

I'd say "I couldn't care less" already has some sarcasm in it. According to Wikipedia (and apparently the Oxford English Dictionary), sarcasm is "a sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter gibe or taunt." Saying "I car so little about it, I couldn't care less" can be quite bitter. Why not just say "I don't care at all"? So saying that "I could care less" is sarcastic is not just a lame excuse for poor grammar, it's a complete misunderstanding of the phrase, imo.

I mainly find it useful to translate something foreign back to English. The result may not be perfect, some words can be completely wrong or not translated at all, but it gives a good idea of what the original text meant to say. I wouldn't use it if I couldn't check the outcome.

As for board games, 'Word on the Street' looks interesting. I haven't played this myself, but there's this video:

I think music can certainly help. I do see people posting here that it can be difficult to hear the lyrics, and I agree with that. Even native speakers often get lyrics wrong. I can enjoy listening to music and reading the lyrics at the same time though. Just Google "[name of the song] lyrics" and you'll find tons of sites. In some cases, for Japanese songs, for example, they also come with an English translation. Can also save some embarrassment:

I often find not having actual pages is more inconvenient. What if you want to compare several words? You can easily flip back and forth in a paper dictionary, but having to search for the two words all the time can be a bit annoying. Also, I don't have a smartphone (and I'm not interested in one), so apps mean nothing to me.

I love Amelie, but I'd have to be in the mood to watch it. Even though I barely speak any French, after watching that film, I'm thinking in French for a week.