3500 idioms

Hi, I am a native Chinese speaker, I could understand 99.99% Mandarin which was spoken on tele or on a day to day conversation, only a small percentage Chinese idioms which I am not very clear or never heard/remembered. I gather the English is the same, all English people were not born to Native speakers, they learnt English from Schools too, year by year till they were in the middle school they could understand most of the idioms and vocabularies.

I bought 2 books recently, 1 was about British Idioms which had about 1000 idioms, after I read the book I recognised that I could understand a lot more from tele, now, I am reading the other book which had about 3500 American idioms, seems the 3500 included most of the 1000 I had already read. I now have the book in hand with me when I watch American films, once I picked up some strange idioms, I always had high chance to find them out from the book, I was correct, with the book I could understand almost 99% tv programme. I spent over 20 years learning English and still felt frustrating about this the most complicated language in the world until now I found the 2 books. The 3500 idioms covers 99% frequently used expressions.

We are all human not super men, only Shakespeare and celebrities could develop English and invent some new idioms, rest of us always speak/write the terms which others have already used and printed in some books. I might still speak like a foreign but I felt so happy at least I could understand 20% more English than what I could do a few months ago.

3500 idioms sounds a lot, but compare that with making money for a living, it is not much.

I have set a goal to remember and speak those 3500 idioms fluently, and one day I will turn out to be a '99% native English speaker'.