Why does language X work like this? Why is this said this way? Can’t I just say it like in English?

This question and related questions stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of what languages are. When languages evolved to be able to express all the meanings that we are able to express nowadays, they had to make many arbitrary decisions to come up with a system to be able to represent reality in the form of sounds. In practice, we would need too many words if we wanted to have one word for every possible meaning that we wanted to convey, so many meanings and nuances are expressed using set expressions, collocations (fixed, arbitrary combinations of a verb with a noun, like “pay attention”) and figurative language. Since many of these decisions are arbitrary, it’s impossible to expect that different languages would have made the exact same decisions, and if you want to be able to communicate in another language, you have to get used to the fact that the rules of English don’t apply to other languages. Insisting on directly translating English expressions to other languages will result in odd looks, people taking quite a bit of time to understand what you mean, or even not understanding at all. To get a feeling for what the other person will experience when listening to somebody talk using literal translations, here are a few expressions translated literally from other languages that sound completely fine in those languages but that don’t work in English, to the point where some of them wouldn’t be understood in many circumstances:\n\nI have 26 years (I’m 26 years old).\nI fold from work (I leave work).\nThat’s my meaning (That’s what I mean).\nI’m breaded (I’m sluggish/groggy).\nShe didn’t defend the rules (She broke the rules).\nIt was a match of where and where? (Which two national teams played against each other?)\n\nDoing the same from English to another language results in the same kind of strange-sounding language that ranges from the slightly odd to the completely incomprehensible.