Sadly, there wasn't mush of a discussion though. But hey, at least I was the only contributor from the learning camp so the exercise didn't go unnoticed after all.

Thank you Richard four your effort to involve people in a jolly cooperation, and for a fun experience. :) It might not have worked time but I hope that your effort would pay off eventually.

Ok , let's try our best!

1. My sister lives with my parents.

After the joint my sister was kicked out of home, so now she, obviously, doesn't live with my parents.

2. I know the answer.

Since 42 doesn't count, I guess I have no idea what the answer is.

3. I want to leave now.

I don't want to leave now, not in a million years.

4. My mother works at a bank.

After a couple of rounds of blackmailing and slandering of previous CEO my mother doesn't work at a bank, she owns it.

5. Sarah sings really well.

This Sarah's ability could be described like so, she doesn't sing, not really, not well, not anything.

6. Martin gets along with his brother-in-law.

After 2 broken ribs, swallowed wedding ring and drunken dive into a wedding cake screaming "jeronimo" Martin doesn't get along with his brother-in-law

7. The boy killed the spider with his shoe.

Trying to become a Spiderman the idiot boy didn't kill a spider with a shoe, doing you could guess what instead.

8. She recognized him at once.

His smiling mug was asking for a slap so she just didn't recognize him at first.

9. He apologized for his conduct.

In the light of pressing circumstances, Terminator did not to apologise for his conduct of mutilating several hundred cops.

10. She threw a tantrum when she was told that she wouldn’t be able to go.

Halfway down, melancholically considering whether to scream of not, and pondering about bungee cord strength, she started to regret that she didn't throw a tantrum when she was told that she wouldn’t be able to go.

Wanted to continue our little game of idiom exchange but I wouldn't. That's how i am when I'm tired.

Just want to give you little insight into Russian idiom that is quite similar looking to "elephant in the room" one but has quite a different meaning.

There is a Russian saying "Слон в посудной лавке" that literally translates like "Elephant in a china shop". There are even several Russian fables bearing the same name.

The meaning is simple. The proverb "Like an elephant in a china shop" is used to describe a very clumsy person.

Aaaaaand good night! :)

Reply to: K P

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I'm not good at memorizing new words:((((

I feel you so much. Partially I keep my obsessive pangs of memorizing in check by writing words and their meanings in a notebook, physical one, with pages, longhand. I might promptly forget all of those, but I'm comforted by the though that at least I tried. And notebook is not going to go anywhere anyway.

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Most are obvious form the context, and for me English is full of words 'ovbvious from context', which I'm not sure what they mean precisely.

That's the pitfall I'm honestly trying to avoid as much as I can. Mostly cramming my head with words that are used in very narrow contexts or specific areas. Contextual understanding has it's benefits in, obviously, understanding. But this approach hits you back pretty hard when you try to convert this sort of knowledge into any  kind of communication. Expressing yourself in a contextual way is pretty much impossible, if you don't have a solid, rock hard ground level knowledge of vocabulary. On a conceptual rather than contextual level.

Though there is another pitfall that was described somewhere before. At some point you risk being misunderstood or taken for a professorial prick, and deserving to be loathed for being too smart.

Reply to: Susan

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There are so many words that are really not worth the time of trying to get into our active vocabulary.  If we used them in speech, it does not help communication.

I have to say that I'm in a strong opposition to your point of view on this particular subject. If even native speakers start to reject nuancing of their own language, communication might erode into a very messy affair. Even simple concepts would have to be explained not by colourful, or exact, or precise words or therms but by something that says things,... about things, that do stuff, like this, in a way, kind of, I mean... I mean, you get what what I mean. :)

Reply to: Maria I (part 3)

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What are you reading, anyway?

Something. A lot, of something. It happens so that that I like science fiction among other things. And guess what, Clifford Simak, Ray Bradbury, Arthur Clarke, William Gibson and other interesting writers mostly make do with English language to provide insights into their imagination. And I read and listen to a lot of books on a daily basis, around 2-5 books per month, if I have enough time.

Lately I was brooding over things like:
"The Shadow of the Torturer" by Gene Wolfe. It was the 1 part of the series. Didn't see that coming.
"American Gods" by Neil Gaiman. Read it for the 2 time, to refresh old memories. Finished it just before the announcement of TV adaptation.

"Pattern Recognition", "Spook Country", "Zero History" trilogy by William Gibbson. Freaking brilliant read! From now on Case Pollard, despite being a woman, is going to be a part of my internal role model.

"The Lifecycle of Software Objects" by Ted Chiang. Good stuff about AI that reads more like a story of parents raising children rather than Skynet blasting human population off the face of the Earth.
This guy wrote a novella "Story of Your Life" that was recently adopted by Denis Villeneuve into a pretty good movie "Arrival", that was generally misunderstood by almost everyone.

And I can go on and on in this fashion for quite a while but that might get stale pretty fast, so I'll just shut my pie hole for now. (though I, naturally, type with my fingers. Too lazy to remember some good metaphor for that)

Right how I'm reading "Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin, and planning to try to bite into "The Silmarillion" by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Reply to: Maria I (part 2)

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I think most people, unless they've read a lot, won't know these. I loved the mention of the Burns poem someone made, I read that recently and learned some about the Scots language. :)

Read a lot, yeah, fat chance! Twittor (there is no mistake in the word Twitter there) it the a staple of written word consumption nowadays.
On a bright note though, if you do read, it's such a delight to get into darwoods of strange and just complex stuff. And by God, I really, really, tried to read Beowulf in original. And it's still 1:0 in Beowulf's favour.