For instance, it can pick up phrases like "end of the day" or even abbreviations like "EOW".
The clarinet begins before the singer, provides numerous interludes between verses, and often picks up phrases from the singer's music, providing an echolike effect.
They started picking up phrases in French patois, spoken in rural areas almost as often as English, the official language of the island.
Few people in New York City are as immersed in the language as Mr. Shevlin, 52, a New York City sanitation worker who picked up phrases growing up in a heavily Irish-American neighborhood the Rockaways.
He was doing the kind of hanging-out research that he used to do as a reporter: listening to how people talk, picking up phrases and perspectives on the world.
Where the old records often reduced the drummer's role, he expanded it, playing polymetrically through accompaniment and solos, hungrily picking up phrases from Mr. Mitchell, creating studies in constant variation.
Wild parrots in Australia are apparently picking up phrases from escapee pet cockatoos who join their flocks.
It is through them that we wound up with our guides, Jean-Yves Brizot, a soulful veteran of expedition travel, and his assistant, Vincent DuFour, who has spent four months exploring with the Tuaregs, picking up phrases in Arabic and Tamasheq.
Other people who have owned common starlings report how adept they are at picking up phrases and expressions.
Do you feel confident that you have read widely or learned enough to be able to spot when someone else has picked up phrases or concepts from another person in the field without using their own words?
Once foreign players have become reasonably fluent in English, it is always interesting to note which idiomatic phrases they pick up.
