nuance

I think my favorite parts about learning a language, are those moments when you hear, read, think, or say something that you couldn't quite do in your native tongue. When some subtlety or cultural reference is perfectly clear in the 2nd language, but you wouldn't know how to translate it. I remember that happening sometimes when I was studying German, and I get little hints of it now in Japanese. It's sort of like learning music; you drill the notes and scales, but the reward is in the expression, in capturing something subtle.