Baburra

You're right. I think most cultures are accepting of foreigners not learning the language especially if they are used to tourists but some would probably be more peeved about it than others. It's good to have a basic understanding just so it could serve as a good enough head start since learning from scratch with limited time is just too much to ask of a tourist.

My favorite french word has always been and will probably always be Cheri which means dear or sweetheart. I learned it earlier on in life in terms of usage but the definition never complete sank in for me until I was an adult and knew more about passion and love. Now that I do I love the word even more and I feel giddy whenever I hear other people use it.

I haven't had a chance to watch it myself, but I always hear praises for the film Amelie so I'm guessing it has mass appeal at the very least. I hope to watch it too someday but I usually have to be in a very specific mood to watch foreign films and those phases don't come too often. If I watch it anytime soon I'll come back here to chime in on what I thought about it.

Yes. I studied some Spanish after college because I was interested in it but bit by bit I lost interest and now I can't remember any of my memorized words or phrases from that time in my life. I do still know of some of the words though because our language is very close to it, but that's about it. Most of the conversational phrases have been forgotten already.

I haven't downloaded any apps for this but I would recommend just actively seeking out a word everyday. I myself have learned a lot of words I otherwise would never have used just by doing this. I'm sure there is an app out there that would offer you such a thing but if not then you could just subscribe to one of the many language sites and get updates everyday.

I experience this too. Sometimes I just instinctively know that a word is misspelled just by looking at it and I usually try and fix it in my mind before I go and look it up somewhere just so I could test my own knowledge. I think it just has to do with being so familiar with the language and the structure that everything becomes so natural in a way that you immediately know once something is deviating from said structure, whether it be regarding spelling, vocabulary, grammar, or punctuation.

I Personally learned a lot just by watching videos online. There are lots of people staging conversations in french and even acting them out for better understanding, and I think that helps a lot as it did help me out significantly. The only real obstacle is practicing regularly but as far as retaining the learned phrases and words, I found those videos to be very helpful.

I have a few friends who have migrated to Sweden and I'm slowly learning more and more about their words and language as well as their culture through them so I guess it just happened naturally for me. Because of these small lessons and trivia I am getting I've slowly been gaining more and more interest about the country which I previously would probably never have paid much attention to and now I'm actively trying to learn the language.

As far as I know, they can be used almost interchangeably, and the reason why one sounds out of place in some cases is because "although" is considered more formal than "though" or "even though", so when you are speaking casually, it sounds out of place to suddenly use such a formal word in between. That's just my take on it. I'll be waiting for other explanations too as I am also curious about this.

Hannibal Lecter would be one of my favorite ones. He is very interesting and I think the movie only made me like him even more. It's of course absurd for a killer to seem lovable but this is what makes the character so great because you really shouldn't feel any affection for him at all but you somehow are able to find some charm in him.

I always found "piece of cake" to be very strange too. I never understood why it was structured that way since it's not even the right term of measure for a cake. It should have been slice, but I am just overthinking it at this point, of course. My pick for one of the strangers would be "raining cats and dogs" though, since even just picturing it already makes me chuckle.

XTinx makes a great point. Mistakes will happen even for native speakers, and like OP said, it's even more understandable in multilingual people. On a side note, I just had to look up what pedant means and now I have a new word in my vocabulary. So... Thanks! :grin:

I learned these when I was very young so I don't know if the teaching style would be as useful to adults, but I learned the differences mainly just by knowing the basic use of each, individually, before being compared with each other. There, for example, I learned early on, was for pointing at places, and so on. After a while it just became second nature that I didn't even imagine that other people had trouble with it.

My native language is close to Spanish and when I found out that Italian was also close to it, I looked into it further and found a lot of similar words and I began to see the language differently. I think I would even have an easier time with the accent than most people because the rolls of the tongue are somewhat similar. Though, I don't doubt for a second that the time, effort, and dedication necessary to learn a whole new language remains the same even with this slight head start.

I'd recommend just practicing by yourself and with others. If you find your own natural way to speak then it wouldn't matter as much even if your accent is a bit off. If you can, just try and repeat the phrases by yourself and find which tones you are most comfortable with. You could also try to find some Skype partners to converse with, and soon enough you should get used to it that it becomes second nature.

There are a number of websites that have audio accompaniment for phrases such as these, and there are also a few Youtubers who give these types of tutorials in conversational french for free so I'd recommend just checking those out. Honestly, though, pronouncing these words is still very difficult even with the accompanying audio guides, at least for me, that is.

I've tried learning Spanish and the biggest weakness I've encountered was remembering words that are too far from other languages that I'm used to. Spanish is already very near to my own native language so a lot of the words already sound familiar but there are also some that are completely different from both my native language or English which I am equally used to. I know I could get it memorized with a lot more practice though.

I agree. If you're someone who consumes a lot of English media such as movies, books, or even just articles online, then you'd get used to it enough to know when something sounds out of place, and considering most of us probably encounter English based media everyday then it shouldn't be too hard to miss.

Are there any idiomatic expressions that are universally used by all or at least many countries? I'm inclined to think that almost all idiomatic expressions would only be unique to their individual cultures but I wonder if there were some that most countries would use in pure form but translated. For example, raining cats and dogs is unique to only English as far as I know, but maybe an idiom like 'sweating like a pig' would be more common and therefore used by other countries in their own language? That's just a rough example though and I don't expect it to be so, but I'd love to hear from locals of other countries if there are any idioms in your culture that translate exactly to some idioms used by English speakers.

I'd go with British or French as well, though, structurally speaking, I'd consider English as a whole to be one of the more sophisticated languages because it spans not only conversation between English speakers but it also has already bled into technological and scientific terms, which is why it is the most adapted language into many other cultures because some of their words have no local substitutes.

I agree it's very difficult to explain some of these idioms and it's much better to just grow up with them, which is probably why we sometimes know a lot of these and what they connote but never even give them a second thought with concerns to what their literal meaning would be or what their origins could possibly have been. Though, I still think that there are probably some idioms that are universal and more or less just translated within languages, but for now I can't think of any.

It doesn't sound too out of place for me. I think it is acceptable to use in this situation because the alternative of using 'up' is a bit too informal. Onwards connotes moving further towards a positive so it sounds like a good fit to me to use it for using it in a similar manner to upward.

I learned most of my other languages when I was very young and I think that was the best age to learn since I didn't have too many distractions or worries. When I was at college I tried learning another new language but at the time I was already too preoccupied with many other things and found myself to be very easily distracted or bored. That's just me though but even then I would still gladly go back to school to learn a new language if I could because I find it's much more fun to learn when you are surrounded by people with the same goal.

Yes, I think it helps in a very small way, because you get to memorize the lyrics without even knowing it if you like that song that much, and later on as you grow more interested in the language and decide to look it up, you'd at least already have something to start off from. That said, I don't think it can be relied on as a major way to learn Japanese but I definitely do think it gives inspiration and some sort of structure or foundation to learning the language.

One of my favorites is "cat's meow", because for one thing, I am very into cats, and second it just sounds very whimsical and old, which kind of makes it comical but in a very positive way. I doubt many people still use it nowadays but whenever I do hear someone use it, even ironically, it makes me feel very pleased.