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Imagine being married to a woman who you've only ever interacted with in movie quotes. Hasta la vista, baby.

Dip your toes in the water, then dive right in. There's no better way to learn actual dialects and useful words than being surrounded by it.

Sign language seems to be a great way to communicate, and I would recommend anyone pick it up. Its tough to learn anything if the need isn't really prevalent in your life, but you never know when it might come in handy.

I suppose you could argue that women are more likely to be social in any situation, but that's certainly not always the case. Men could just as well take to it just as fast or faster. It all depends on the importance of learning the language.

That's interesting to learn, and I can agree. An action word, otherwise known as a verb, works well enough by itself because it needs no further explanation. Someone might tell you "Take it!" or "Go!". I think these actually work in your brain in another way than regular speech, sort of assigned a higher priority.

Haha, that's the one I immediately thought of. There are so many English sayings that are just ludicrous. It is kind of fun to say, however. More fun to say than, perhaps "its raining boulders and flakes".

One idiom that would be even more confusing is "that was a cakewalk". I suppose at some point in time there were people who walked for the sake of cake, but it really is a stretch. After a while it becomes recognized more and more and people just accept it, though. I suppose it helps if it just rolls off the tongue, or if its a catchall kind of answer.

I have felt embarrassed because I didn't take the time to learn it beforehand when I knew I would be around a different language. I lived in China for half of a year, and I just jumped in headfirst with really no knowledge of it aside from the very basics. I was able to get around easily enough after picking up some general terms (they had a Walmart there and the pronunciation of the Chinese symbols read "wa er ma"). My trip was more about teaching English than it was about learning Chinese, though, so I don't feel too bad.

It's funny you should mention English as a beautiful language, I always considered it to be rather bland. There are more expressive languages such as Italian and French that really have a wonderful sound behind them, but I suppose it also depends on who is speaking them! To me, English always feels like a business type of language, just very to the point. Also, English relies a lot on idioms and sayings like "there's always more fish in the sea" and "you can't see the forest for the trees". I suppose other languages have just as many sayings, but it feels especially apparent with English.

I just joined today and I wanted to say hello! A little background, I am a native English speaker and I have lived and worked in China for six months. That part of my life is over, and I'm living in New York with a wonderful Italian family! I also have an interest in German, but there are many interesting languages I'd like to explore.