"Verbs?"

Happy welcome to you, happy welcome to you, happy welcome dearmaliciousmazehtheda-ane . . . happy welcome to you . . .

Yes, it's true. Using verbs can dramatically increase one's peformance on examinations--and not just in English. However, as for offering any help with English verbs--forget it, we don't know any more about it than you do.

Say, you ain't no kin to Canute, air ya?

King - Denmark 1018-1035, I guess. Well, no. But hey, I really thought you'd know some verbs, I mean, aren't they used regularly in USA/England?

I strongly suspect yer pushin' my leg . . .

OK, i'll play along . . . what does udsagnsord mean in your language?

Verbum I guess. I'm not really a pro at latin.

Well, i begin to think that you are serious about this. Every language has verbs--language couldn't function without them.

Common English verbs include: eat, sleep, talk, walk, sit, stand, go, come, shout, whisper . . . you couldn't function without verbs, and that goes for Danish as well.

... Maybe I don't mean verbs then. Seriously, what I'm looking for is like "catchphrases" like... "It's raining cats and dogs." a... well, I've completely forgotten the right word about it.. or I can another one "That's not my cup of tea."

Idiomatic expressions . . . now we're getting somewhere. Many of those expressions have origins which even English speakers are unaware of. Yes, Americans at least like to sprinkle such expressions in their speech. They are less well-thought-of if used in literature. Now we can get down to business. Give me some of those expressions with which you are having trouble, and i'll see if i can't confuse the issue hopelessly.

No no no, I need to learn some That's my problem. My teacher told me, that it could increase my grades, if I could sound like an american or english-man of origin.
So, basically, I just wanted to ask, if someone could learn me some, and that'd be great.
But as a button, the thing it's called, it's Idiomatic expressions??

Yes, I remember my teacher telling us the same. But he gave us 5 idiomatics expressions at the beginning of each lesson which we had to learn.
Can't you ask him/her to prepare handouts or to give you some links?


to send a person to Coventry
to be off base
to send so. packing

I hope you will get a lot more, because I am interested in learning too.

OK, this is going to take a while. The verb to learn means to acquire knowledge. The verb to teach means to impart knowledge. So, it is incorrect to say "if someone could learn me some,"--rather, you would say "if someone could teach me some." I don't understand why you use the word button, but yes, such locutions are called "idiomatic expressions." It means an expression for which the meaning is not self-evidenct, but which is understood by the native speaker.

I advise you to find plays in the English language, whether written by American or English playwrights, from about 1900 to the present. When learning French, i found plays to be a great source of examples of the spoken language. As a speaker of English, i would find it difficult to think of useful idiotmatic expressions, "just off the top of my head." ("Just off the top of my head" is an idiomatic expression which means extemporaneously--but i used it to point out that the only way to find them is to use them in context--and that is why i advise you to read plays.)

Plays... ok, I'll try, not that I really know any, but I'll try.

Go online and do a search for playwrights+American, playwrights+English, playwrights+Canadian, etc. You should be able to find the plays online. It's just that it would be difficult to sit here and think up the sorts of expressions you'd want--both because one does not regularly canvass one's store of "colorful speech," and many of them are so common that one doesn't think about the expressions one uses and whether or not they are idiomatic.

*Double posted, due to lag, sorry!*

Oy, I succeeded in actually in finding a really useful site for idioms.

http://www.dictionary.cambridge.org/results.asp?dict=I

For "ul" who was also looking

Thanks for taking your time, Setanta, I found this site via your search suggestions

Good for you, Boss. You might also try a search for "playwrights+American+list," "playwrights+English+list" and so forth . . . this would be to find a list of playwrights, and then to take individual names from the list and search for them. I think the plays might help as you would see the expressions in context.

The origins of idiomatic expressions are sometimes obscure, so that even those who use them don't understand them. Ul's reference to "send someone to Coventry" is an example. During the English civil wars of the mid-17th century, Parliament maintained a prison at Coventry, to which Royalists officers captured in battle were sent, and held indefinitely because no process had been established for trying them in a court. Therefore, the expression means to make a person irrelevant--just as those officers were kept out of the way, but hadn't been necessarily convicted of a crime.

Other expressions continue to make sense to those who use them. "To be off base" refers to the American game of baseball. There are three bases, and to score, the "base runners" (those who have successfully hit the ball, or have gotten to the first base due to bad throws by the pitcher) have to advance to each of them in turn, and then back to the "home plate." A runner can leave the base to attempt to get a start on running to the next, but if his teammate hits the ball, and it is caught before it touches the ground, the runner must go back to the base from which he started. If the ball is thrown to that base, and he is touched by it before returning to the base, he is "out" and must leave the field. So, "to be caught off base" means to be unprepared, and often, to have been guilty of assuming too much and being proven wrong.

Somebody who has sparse economic resources-couldn't buy a frog a jacket.

Somebody who's hopeless-couldn't knock a skin off a rice pudding.

A woman on the make-fur coat and no knickers.

A woman on beauty treatments-mutton dressed up as lamb.

How many do you want-I know thousands.

I don't need more, I found that site. I think it'll provide enough, for a while, thanks anyway.

You mean "teach me some". But you are completely misunderstanding!!!!!

To learn a language, you have to do this thing called WORK. Spelled "W-O-R-K". Then a thing happens in your brain. That's how the learning happens.

Read English books.
Watch English films.
Listen to English radio.

If you just get lists of idiomatic phrases from people on the net, you didn't make any effort, so you won't learn the language properly.