You know what I like? Idioms.

Idioms separate the native speakers from those that learned English from a book or in a classroom.  Idioms are often illogical and fly in the face of reason, but they stick around because of their sheer charm.

If a person could live like an idiom, what a world this would be.

You know what I enjoy more than idioms?  Foreign people who use idioms slightly incorrectly or too often, because they’ve just learned them and want to show off their knowledge of the language.

I enjoy this partially out of the complex linguistic niche that idioms fill and how hard it is to describe when learning English.  But I think I also enjoy it partially because I wish I could use idioms that often, that I could get away with it.  As it is, I’m relegated to using them only when they are one of the most popular (“let’s call it a day”) or in the rare occasion when I want to sound obtuse (“long in the tooth”).  How I wish I could sprinkle them in conversation as if I had just learned them, beaming with pride and satisfaction for mastering a complex turn of phrase.

When all is said and done, though, I’m all talk and no cider anyway.