So, I've heard around the community theories on how unicorn magic works. Observing how unicorns do magic, ways how they can learn them (spells), it became really familiar to something I know from real world and how I can explain it. So, by my theory, unicorn magic is kinda like tricks in extreme sports in our world. Ok why. For us, non magic people, all spells look the same as in unicorns do the same thing, but effects are different. But, can someone (that's not into skateboarding or extreme sports) tell difference in movement of feet/body of person here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciQukQjlj7M and here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jnlb6mC538 . To a normal person, those 2 people did exactly the same move, but had different results, while for a skateboarder (or someone that's into some other extreme sport that's close to skateboarding (snowboarding, wakeboarding etc)) can tell the difference in movement of a skateboarder, and even so, if person that saw that trick (irl or on a video) was skilled enough, and didn't know that trick, he could replicate those movements and learn that trick just from looking how it's done (like twilight learned dark spell from celestia or gem finding spell from rarity). Of course, you could also learn magic spell from a book, same as skateboarding trick, which you can read theoretical description how it's done, and try to replicate that theory in reality. So, in conclusion, in my theory, for us, non magic people (and probably for pegasus and earth ponies), all magic spells look the same, with different outcomes, but to unicorns, they are all different, and they see something that we don't see, and that's how they can replicate and learn magic spells. Just like people do in extreme sports. (yes, and there are new spells that you write/invent yourself, which would be equivalent of creating new trick)
I like that idea, Yetione! A lot of people tend to go pretty esoteric with their ideas of unicorn magic and how it works, but this is quite down to Eart- em, Equestria. And actually I do tend to agree with you on this. It seems that Applejack will never understand the difference between a levitation spell and an illumination spell besides their effect. And this DOES explain why Twilight can so easily copy Celestia's spell, and I'd rather think that unicorns in general can do that and it's not just Twilight bein' better than everyone else. Good stuff!
I'm going to go with twilight sparkle's reaction to Pinkie's twitches. It makes no sense. And that's ok