when i was small i used to think that french was just a distorted form of english and was convinced that i could speak it!!

frenchi

I used to believe that people from England spoke an ancient language that wasn't English, kind of like how the Irish used to speak Galic, and that the English language was a relatively new language.

Kate3115

When my older sister was learning French at secondary school, she would practice numbers and verbs etc. Somehow I got it into my head that it went un, deux, trois etc up to 13, when I thought it went quatorze, cans, tins, and then I couldnt remember any more numbers! I was repeatedly told by my family this was incorrect, but it wasn't until I got to school was taught the numbers that I had to work really hard to forget cans and tins and continue on to vingt and beyond!

Gemz

When at school (in wales) we were taught umah was "here" (not sure if thats the correct spelling). So when we moved to england "umah" was a slang for oh dear or you've done somthing wrong.

Ummaahhh. "Yes i know your here."

lol haven't been told otherwise yet. ;)

Jonat

When I was 7 or 8 I had neighbors that were black and they spoke Spanish so for years I thought all black people could speak Spanish!

Not so smart

i used to believe that people who spoke different languages (like spanish) had different numbers..i believed this till i was 13!

Anon

i used to belive that English wasa THE frist langudge, and every other country coppied off of us, and that we were the origanal and only ours counted, and no other one was real. they just jibber jabbered...

Olivia

I used to believe that if you knew a single word of any language, you were automatically descended from it. So I say, "I'm part English, Arabic, Spanish, Portugese," and the list goes on. That was until Mom correct

Dazed and Confused

Although I must have known from television and general life that Americans spoke English, I managed to convince myself, and my friends too, that they spoke an entirely different language. My father used to go on frequent business trips to America, and when he came back, I would tell my friends that he had taught me something new about the American language. I even claimed to have been taught several songs in 'American' which I performed for them - they were complete gibberish, of course.

Given the amount of American TV shows we get in the UK I don't know why I thought this would be convincing, nor why the other children believed. It never fails to surprise me, either, that I half believed these fantastic tales myself.

Anon

When I was little, I thought that everyone was born knowing english, but had to learn the langauge in which they lived to 'fit in' and 'be normal'

Ann-onymous

Since I couldn't make any sense of what babies were "saying" when they were babling, I was convinced when I was a child that American babies must speak Chinese. Likewise I concluded that Chinese babies must speak English.

Jared

I used to believe that since every country had their own language; everybody laughed differently.. Yea... The Swedes laughed different from the danish and so on.. I was pretty disappointed when we first went on holiday to Sweden.... Lisa-Norway

Lisa

When I was 7 we moved to Malaysia. Before we left my mum told me that they speak a different language over there. I just assumed that meant that they spoke in opposites.

Anon

I used to believe that words that rhyme in my languaje must rhyme in other languages too!

Tonatiuh

I did French Immersion (half day English, half day French) all through elementary school, and remember thinking that French was pretty much like English except with a different pronunciation. So art was art, science was science, musique was music, hygiene was health (it was just a more flowery term.) It took me awhile to accept that I was just learning plain old spelling and not the ancient and revered discipline of orthography.

Anon

i thought i could speak my own language because when i spoke in this language to my friend he wud talk bak the same i thought id invented a language until i tried speaking to my dad like that and he didnt replay.

poiuytrewqlkjhgfdsa

i used to believe that you could learn foreign languages by subsituting foreign letters with english letters. For example bonjour = good day, so ... b=g, o=o, j=d ...

Anon

When I was a kid, a newspaper published the Russian Alphabet. I thought I was very clever in substituting the letters of English words with the Russian equivalent.... to this day, I blush when I am reminded of it, as I told everyone I could now speak/write Russian!

Donny