language and the internet

[Chaerophon]

Okay, sorry about the "wordy" question. Here goes another try: I realize that sentence structure will be a problem in "word for word" translations. However, it seems to me as though English is a particularly idiomatic language (at least when compared to French). I could be wrong.

What I'm wondering is whether it was fairly easy for you to pick up idiomatic English due to its "crossover" into Norwegian via media and internet influences, or, was it extremely difficult? Often when I attempt to speak French (I do have a decent knowledge of sentence structure, etc.), I find that what I'm trying to say does not have the same meaning when directly translated, and out comes the book of idioms. However, my Swedish friends picked up idiomatic Englich with very little trouble. Perhaps it simply has to do with the effects of learning a language through immersion as opposed to learning via school and tapes: you would know better than I...

Basically, my question is: is there a lot of idiomatic crossover from English to the Scandinavian languages? For instance, it seems as though the Swedes, Fins, and Norwegians of the NHL tend to have a much better command of the language than do their Russian, Czech, and French speaking counterparts.