Chengyu are back!!

What is the secret of learning English ? to know American Pop Culture and ... french

Was he Chinese?  一本正经 doesn't really mean the act to 'concentrate' - rather it means to take seriously, to be earnest in atittitude.  Ie you'd use it to express a serious and earnest way of asking a question, or a serious attitude towards ones studies in general, but you wouldn't use it to mean some person is currently concentrating on some specific thing (though of course a serious attitude towards something may in many contexts imply concentration).  For concentration 聚精会神 ju4jing1hui4shen2 could be used. 

That's the problem with being slightly off in one's understanding - if one used 一本正经 when one's meaning was really 聚精会神, it's possible one would never be corrected, as people would just think you meant to describe a serious attitude rather than the act of conentrating...and in most circumstances hearing others use the word you could 混淆 hun4xiao2 (mix up) the two and the context wouldn't let you know something was off... 

I like 入乡随俗, I just it's easier to use for English speakers maybe.  A few ones I learnt recently from chatting to people online that I think are pretty cool are 滥竽充数 (I actually managed to use this one too) which means like a token person, so if you were in a orchestra but you were only pretending to play you would be 滥竽充数.  Another one I liked was 一言难尽 cause the meaning is simple which is something like "hard to explain in a few words".  Another simple one 熟能生巧 practice makes perfect.  It's surprising how many Chengyu people use to me, it seems to me that people either use them quite a bit or very little/not at all but that's just from my experience.

 滥竽充数 is brilliant. Most chengyu have at least some oblique or non-literal meaning, but this one is particularly delicious with the mental imagary: I think we've all had the experience of being in a group where some people aren't pulling their weight because they're incompentent, and usually they know it. So in a choir these people usually sing sort of quietly, or at least in the beginning of passages where a mistake in timing would be sort of obvious. Or, as you say, in an orchestra, the low-grade fill-in 竽 player merely pretends to play, so as not to trumpet his non-musicianship. So much going on, all that covert faking, yet with knowing looks by the other musicians, all conveyed by 4 words!

Sorry I can't reply to everyone individually, guys, I am off on a little adventure in a few minutes; just me, my e-dictionary and five other people.. :)

and won't have much opportunity to engage with ChinesePod for a while.  

But thanks for your chengyu contributions - as I have said in the past I am very slow at learning chengyu. It will come eventually.  :)  

has anybody seen the movie Karate Kid ?

there was this one chengyu, but i cant remember it....
the meaning was "if you practice too often, it's bad" or something like that....