Dear daurelie

I noticed from your profile that you hung around a few days before your first posting. Am assuming, therefore, that you had a great deal of trepidation to get over. The wonderful thing about this place is that nobody here can reach through the ether into your life and mock you for anything you say or do. Which means this is a good place in which to take chances and experiment a little. Ask as many questions as you want, expect a few dismissive or smart-arse responses, and wait for the flood of truly sympathetic, substantive replies that the members of this board usually provide.

With regard to your initial question, I see two ways of interpeting your request: either you want to be able to use words appropriately, and stylishly, and damn the grammar; or you are interested in being able to talk about the technical parts of language. If the second is your intention, you are probably best off getting hold of a combination of books - Fowler, Pinker's The Language Instinct and so on.

If the first - if it's words in use that interest you - then things can be remarkably easy. As many other have suggested, reading is brilliant practice - not only do you get the joy of reading, but you constantly come across new words, or old words in interesting contexts. If you are not frightfully confident, read with a dictionary by your side, and look up the trickier words. But remember - your brain is probably a vastly more powerful tool than you give it credit for. You learnt very few, of the thousands of words you already know, from a dictionary, or from being told the meaning. Most meanings you picked up from context - someone says 'horizon' and refers to the place where the sky meets the sea. Soon you learn to generalise and treat horizon with confidence. You may never have looked up the word in a dictionary, but 'instinctually' you know that it is a noun (a 'thing' word), and you know where and when to use it. Confidence in the use of words will usually come from lots of reading - so that you can see your interesting words in different contexts, and allow your own special language organ to frame that word successfully in your memory.

Didactic mode off. Sorry about the lengthy sermon, but as you have probably realised, most of us here are very fond of the language - missionaries for English, you might say...

all the best in your linguistic safaris.

the sunshine warrior