I learned English as a second language. I have often found certain usages of the English language imaginative and poetic -- while such observations seem to esca

I learned English as a second language. I have often found certain usages of the English language imaginative and poetic -- while such observations seem to escape my native speaker friends. for example, I found much beauty that English uses the same word for both "wave someone goodbye" and "water waves". Now when I walk by the shore, I feel the sea is calling out to me -- this is an association that I never had in my native language, which makes no connection between hand-waving and water waves. Hofstadter wrote about this, that in different languages people bundle together different concepts. and such bundling is hidden from native speakers. My friend (a native speaker of both English and French) once remarked that she really wished she could re-read some French literature as a non-native speaker so as to deeper appreciate the beauty of the language.