anglophilia

To make a meal of it - to make an unnecessary fuss about someone's mistake. 'All right, we should have warned you earlier, but there's no need for you to make a meal of it.'

Where exactly do those expressions lie in your head when you need them? I suppose, it is a very long process, until your brain is compartmentalised correctly and in the right language.

Apart from dreaming of going to England I have spent most of my life loving and learning English (language). This is probably the reason why I am doing an English language and literature degree at the moment.

To queer someone's pitch - to thwart or spoil someone's plans. The War Office queered our pitch by posting me oversees twenty-four hours before our wedding day.'

My husband queered my pitch when he forbade me from entering a university. Sounds strange, doesn't it? Well, it's true.

The point of anglophilia posts is to improve my knowledge of English language in general and of course to raise to the challenge.

I am not a quick thinker and it is very rare that I have the capacity in my little brain (placed in an inconveniently oversized head) to respond to anything challenging or interesting when it comes. So, me being me, what I do is collect phrases, expressions, colloquialisms in my mind so that when the occasion does come I have something to say. This is probably why my 'English Idioms' book is so often in my hands.

The point is, when you chose another language to be the tool for communication for the rest of your life it is not easy, but it is after all your choice. I am someone who wrote, still writes and intends to write even more in the future in English rather than my mother tongue. It was not brought on by anyone but my own stubbornness and determination to absolutely outdo myself. I can rather proudly admit that I have done quite well. The beauty of the exercise though is that no matter how much I learn and how good my command of English truly is I can always take it further, make it better, improve it in so many different ways - because there are absolutely no limits for language.

Maybe it is just me but I have always believed that spoken word is the most important tool a human being can acquire. With spoken language we can share and acquire knowledge, we can make friends, argue, compromise, work, even love... Only then does the written word come into the picture and completes the set. We have written language so that we can put down our knowledge somewhere and build on it continuously a written word was always intended to be shared only later when more and more people learned to read and write did the possessive poets take over and hid so many beautiful things away before the world could see them as they were not good enough.. Nothing will be hidden here. Every word that was written was intended as it was, sometimes with a typo sometimes without, but always in its purest form possible - something to be shared.

I just found another one of those charming ones...

Love in a cottage - a love match or marriage which is not supported by sufficient means to keep a couple in comfort.

Just a very pretty way of being incredibly rude, but personally, I'd take take love in a cottage instead of a pretty fake marriage or relationship any day of the week!

This is how it works. Scattered. Sometimes a bit meaningless. But always, absolutely always, myself.