All those years I spent conjugating verbs

I did four years of French in high school. I haven't spoken a word of it since.

The funny thing is, I can remember random phrases, without having much of a clue what they mean anymore. I thought it was supposed to be the other way round - that you forget the words to express what you want to say, not that you remember the words and forget the meaning.

A few days ago, I woke up with je ne sais quoi in my head. I spent the rest of the day murmuring it to myself in quiet moments at work.

zhenesay KWUH!

KWUH KWUH KWUH!

I remembered enough to vaguely figure it out before resorting to Babel Fish.

Another time, the words je suis en enfant du monde got stuck in my head, in a rather hysterical female voice similar to Lisa Simpson exhorting "I AM THE LIZARD QUEEN!"

Did they even teach us that at school?

"I AM A CHILD OF THE WORLD! (MWUH HUH HUH!)"

I wonder what English phrases ESL people get stuck in their heads.

The future of swearing is in safe hands

• M: My sister's three year-old has learned how to swear already.
• Me: What can she say?
• M: She gets it all out of context though. The other day, my sister told her off for something, and she just glared at her Mum and yelled, "FUCK IT OUT!"
• Me: Fuck it out?
• M: Fuck it out. So my sister was shocked, and explained to her about rude words and not using them. Anyway, this little toddler just averted her eyes, and muttered it again under her breath. Fuck. It. Out.
• Me: Wow. I have to say, it's kind of catchy. Like, pretend to say it after banging your elbow really hard. It really nails the sentiment.

Yes, but what does it mean?

I thought I had a pretty good grip on the English language.

I've come to realise, however, how completely dependent I've become on Google's define: function.

Just in the past couple of months:

• Soliloquy
• Iconoclast
• Picaresque
• Ennui
• Asinine
• Soporific
• Quixotic
• Shambolic
  
• Quietening (moment of doubt - is it quieting or quietening?)
• Polak (trying to figure out if I could make a homophone out of poleaxe and Polaks, before having an unsettling suspicion that the work Polak might be a derogatory term. Had a similar moment of PC quandary when I went to write the heading “Live like a Sheikh” on a press release, and then wondered uneasily what a Sheikh was, exactly.)