Heaven helps me!!

Learning is tough. Learning a language is tougher. Learning English is toughest.

I began to worry: how am I going to score well in IELTS with my "Taiplish"?
Because of the exam fees is really tremendously, horrendously, extremely and dreadfully expensive, I decided that I MUST start learning ENGLISH.

I had always heard people saying that the best way to improve your language is to talk more.
Practice makes perfect!
And you learn faster by applying it in your daily lives.

Does that means......

When I am learning synonyms, I have to talk like this:
"Wow, the shopping mall is huge, behemothic, enormous, gargantuan, gigantic, humongous, stupendous, towering, large and big!"
"The kid or moppet, or tot, or child, or bairn, or the little one is so or very, or extremely, or remarkably cute, adorable, charming, pretty and dainty."

Huh.... So tiring! To do that I suppose I must have an incredibly big brain capacity (to remember all the vocabulary) and a huge lung capacity (to say all the words out in a single breath).
Not to mention the odd stares that I will get from others.

And if I am learning idioms? Oh no, I dare not think. I give up.

Perhaps I should sit back and learn from the most basic thing-plural and singular nouns.
But then I got lost in a maze, banging myself into dead ends repeatedly. I just can't understand.

If radius radii
fungus fungi
why hippopotamus hippopotami

If tooth teeth
goose geese
why door deer

Why? Why? Why?
I just don't get it. Perhaps, there is no logical explanation. You can never learn English the mathematical way.
Then I figured out that great mathematicians like Pythagoras had so much problems with their English that they started inventing symbols and equations. Saving time and energy.
Smart guys!

In order to master something, you must starts from the beginning. So I think it will be best for me to learn from the pronunciation of words instead.
Who knows?
Pronunciation is so much difficult than I thought. Enunciating the word right is not a ABC task.
And this always brings up troubles.

A : My grandma (i mean, grammar) is very bad.
B : Really? Why is she bad?
A : Grammar has gender?! It is a she?!

Not funny....
Well, at least I'm not alone in this world. I came across a column where the columnist said that she had difficulty pronouncing the words "larva" and "lava", "coma" and "comma" right.

"But why anyone would want to live at the foot of an active volcano is beyond comprehension. At some stage, you might find yourself having to flee for your life as a river of molten larva rushes towards your house. In your haste, you could easily trip and knock your head on the ground, and end up in a comma for the rest of your life."
~Quoted from How do you say it, by Mary Schneider.

Learning English definitely takes a lifetime.