can I use “besides” for 以外?
it’s the word that always comes to mind.
Sure. Just don’t confuse it with the position expression and you’ll be fine.
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It’s easier to help if you provide a concrete example. The word “besides” can be used in a lot of ways but I’m going to make the wild assumption you mean the “excluding” definition.
But if you are trying to say “I don’t eat anything besides ramen”.
ラーメン以外は食べない。
However you could achieve the same effect by saying:
ラーメンじゃないと食べない。
内 and 外 are also used to modify nouns in surprisingly flexible ways. for example:
社内 - internal to the company
社外 - external to the company
however these are relatively formal words.
both typically refer to “Internal” and “external” in an abstract sense (as in matters within the company and outside of the company), although I suppose could refer to physical location in the right context.
My feeling is that 以外 is a little stiffer and more formal than you would usually hear in casual speech, so if you are trying to talk to a friend you might not use it, but if you are talking at work or to your teacher you might. but in conclusion, if you are asking whether it can be used to mean the “excluding” definition of “besides” then yes.
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How do you use besides in a positional expression? 
I believe what ObolioJ means is as long as you also remember “outside of”, then it’s ok to think of “other than” as “besides”.
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Technically it’d be “beside” in that case, but it could be close enough for confusion. (Especially since people sometimes mix up the two as is, e.g. “that’s besides the point”)
Yeah, exactly what I was thinking. I could only think of examples with “beside”, but I guess I misunderstood the post.
If you substitute “besides” into the example sentences provided on the vocab page, all three read/sound normal, IMO. I often find that exercise useful in trying to test if there is match to another English word/phrase. Granted, it does not always prove useful as some the example sentences are odd or quite contrived. Sometimes substituting produces a version of the example where I would understand what the person was saying but it would sound weird or odd. But what sounds right will vary from region to region.
i came here to learn Japanese but sometimes i am learning just as much English
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My Japanese coworkers have asked me “How do I know when to write ‘A’ vs. ‘An’ before a word?”
I had to go look it up myself to be able to give a good description. If I had to answer on the spot I probably would have said “It’s a feeling you have… you just know what to say… if you’re a native speaker…” 
Or when I got asked why the “maps” in google maps is plural in English, are there multiple maps?
Because in Japanese it is グーグルマップ (Google Map). What happened to the rest of the maps???
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Wow, I didn’t know native English speakers weren’t aware of the rule for a/an 
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It’s pretty simple, but it is a rule we get taught in schools … I didn’t know native speakers didn’t know it either lol
No we totally know it, I don’t know how you couldn’t…
Although there are some edge cases native speakers can’t agree on. Personally I think “An historic [thing]” sounds wrong but apparently it’s correct.
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Most native English speakers would be able to quickly give a rule for when to use a or an. The only problem I see cropping up is many would refer to spelling and not sound, so you would end up with the rule implying that you should say something like “an universe” or “a hour”.
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What? No, “a historic” is correct, not “an historic”. It’s only “an” when the h is silent, like “an hour”.
Ah I stand corrected, in style guides it is indeed regarded as incorrect. Doesn’t stop it from being very common.
E: Seems like it’s mostly an archaism.
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That’s a cute one, didn’t realize it before! Instead I notice the reverse situations with Japanese words like Tシャツ and フルーツ 
I’m not one to say what Natives know or do not know.
Maybe some natives here think they can give a detailed description of A vs An on a phonetic basis. I can’t. I think if you could you’re probably a lot more into grammar than I am. Personally I can’t read phonetic spellings of English words and assume other Natives can’t either, if you can’t read phonetic spellings then I don’t know how you could give a hard rule for A vs An. If anybody has a hot tip I’m open to it though.
Besides… Most of the time I’m giving English advice, there are much bigger issues than whether to write A vs An 
Oh, you want a hard rule? Does English have any of those?
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I don’t think you need to be able to teach someone all the details of vowels in English to be able to just explain that “an” is used before vowel sounds.
“The rule” and “all the details of how it’s implemented” aren’t the same thing.
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