The Answer to All Questions

The curriculum I have been using thus far to learn my new language has involved virtually no grammar and precious few phrases. It is merely memorization of words. For instance the video from several weeks ago that I posted about colors. Each days lesson had a theme and a bunch of words relating to that theme. I have now been introduced to over 2,000 words, but I have no real idea about how to use them in a sentence.

This is pretty frustrating especially when I see friends who have been here for only a couple of months longer than I have responding to locals. One phrase that I kept hearing over and over from my friends stuck in my mind. They would hear a long sentence from a local and they would respond with this phrase. I was so impressed. The use of this phrase would always seem to satisfy the person to whom they were responding. I thought to myself I must learn this magical phrase that seems to be the answer to all questions. If I could only get to the lesson that teaches this phrase I would be miles ahead of the language learning curve.

Today was the day. I learned the magical phrase. I too can now respond with this amazing conversation satisfying phrase. The magical phrase is…………………………………………… “I don’t know.” All this time I thought those guys were so smart and it turns out they were just saying, “I don’t know”. I felt so dumb so many times when the best I could do was to admit my ignorance with the phrase, “I don’t understand”. As it turns out they don’t either. They just knew a phrase that gets less laughs from the locals.

This predicament reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite movies, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

? of the day for popcorn and a classic movie, what movie is the above quote from and what was the word?