How would one call the animal made from papier-mache(I think) filled with candies.A blindfolded kid (usually) takes a stick and tries to hit it. If he does, candies showering from it and everyone picks them up. It often can be seen at children's birthdays or festive arrangements in America.I suppose it is called something like "peniada" or so, but TFD tells me there is no such word
A boy or a girl stands around several other children, points to every kid in turn and says: Ini, mini, myni, mo! And the last one who is pointed to will have to act first or just be picked for a game. How do you call that process? It's silly, really, because it's a simplest word yet I couldn't find it in any dictionary!

Leid wrote:
[i]A boy or a girl stands around several other children, points to every kid in turn and says: Ini, mini, myni, mo! And the last one who is pointed to will have to act first or just be picked for a game. How do you call that process?[/i]

I don't think we ever had a name for it - you can find a lot of data in Wiki under:
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. They just call it "A counting-out song".

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Though lovers be lost, love shall not, and Death shall have no dominion. - Dylan Thomas

[i]I appologise for my unpardonably horrible spelling.[/i]

Well, since they are not real words anyway, you are forgiven.

One theory is that the correct spelling is "Inimicus animo" - a Latin phrase meaning "Enemy of the spirit" . Another that it came from India "ubi eni mana bou" .

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Though lovers be lost, love shall not, and Death shall have no dominion. - Dylan Thomas

In Spanish:
"ta te ti, suerte para ti..."

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I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Interesting .But how come that crept in a counting-out song? Now I'll have to look for its history and derivation. ) To Gram Gram: thanks, I'm flattered)Yes I know that Americans learn foreign languages very reluctantly. I mean, why should they learn them, if half the world speaks or at least tries to speak more or less good English ? What is impressive is school students performance at spelling bees. I know that words at these competitions are really tough to crack. I don't know how many words you have to spell correctly in order to win, but that's still quite a challenge.What is actually surprising is that they may not know the word meaning but spell it correctly anyway.A weird fact about it: last four years winners of US National Spelling Bee are Indian-Americans. The last year winner Sukanya Roy managed to spell correctly the winning word "cymotrichous". I remember reading about her win. She said she only ran through a dictionary a couple of times. When I do a TFD spelling bee, I rarely spell right if I don't know a word. As for Russian, the corner stone of this language is presence of cases and declensions (same goes for Latin). And therefore the endings of words are confusing. Spelling in Russian is relatively easy, maybe that's why we don't have spelling bees Even for a large number of English teachers in Russia the word combination "spelling bee" can sound mysterious.

No, no, no it is perfectly fine! In fact, I would appreciate corrections to my posts if there are any mistakes. Thank you, Romany! While we're at it, let me just say that I'm always amazed by the amount of your knowledge compressed in your comments