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

I'm from Finland, so my mother language isn't English. In Finnish we pronounce actually the same way we write (for example we pronounce Finland's capital Helsinki like Hell-sin-key and kiikari (binocular) little bit like key-car-e). I only knew that in English you write differently than you pronounce, but i thought that it works like A is E, T is V, B is D and so on. so i thought that people who speak english just change letters in their head and then pronounce it like people in finland. I'm not sure when I figured out how it really works but at least at school when I started to study English. I hope you understand my explanation :)

Heya

When i was a kid,I used to think that everyone thought in english.And just spoke different languages.I proved this to myself by trying to think in french.

Fozia

when I was little I thought that to speak a foreign language all you had to do was say an english word backwards. (i.e. soft was tfos)I thought there was only one foreign language and that was how they were doing it. It sounded weird enough when I tried it so it made sense to me!

Mona Lisa

I used to believe that people from foreign country laugh in foreign language. As well as German dogs bark in German language.

just stupid

I used to believe that people who spoke foreign languages had to translate it into English before they understood what it meant

Anon

When I was younger, I used to think there was only so much space in your brain, and once you'd learnt too much of one language, you'd forget another language. (I grew up learning both English and Norwegian and was afraid of learning too much, cos then I'd start forgetting things) I used to think the brain couldn't fit more than two languages at most.

Imagine my surprise when I went on to learn three new languages and realised neither English nor Norwegian were squeezed out of my brain.

Marshmallowpie

When me and my brother were little we sometimes used to pretend we were foreign and speak random gobbledegook to each other - usually in the middle of a shopping centre or other public place. Our mum must have been so embarrassed!

Clare

since I live in CANADA i used to think that every country had two offical languages and that every primary school student had to lear both of them like I had to learn french and english.

Y2K

Growing up, I thought that my family that spoke Yiddish were speaking in cursive.

Anon

one day me and my big sister were trying to act all superior to my little sister. we told her "well WE know english and you dont!" my younger sister replied "yeah i do! ludigong lsuivnd ghusd hfhfu ljkdg. see?"

cheech

when i asked my parents what a foriegn word meant, and they told me the english translation, i used to be so utterly conflused as to why they didn't just say what they meant rather than creating a new "foreign" word

laurel

I used to believe that a person who blows on the french horn would suddenly say words in French out of the horn.

Anon

i thought that (when i was little) the French used numbers instead of letters to spell things!!!!!!!!!!! CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!

The Royal Queen of England, YO!!!!!!!!!

I speak French and my sweet little sister, always trying to impress me, announced proudly that she could also speak French and spoke for the rest of the day in English but with an outrageous French accent, insisting that this was proof she was fluent.

Christina

I used to think that English was the only spoken language.One day in preschool my teacher invited a mom who who whould teach us French, when my teacher told me that I said,"I already know how to make french fries!"

Emmathel

When my husband applied for his first job when he was around 15 or so...
The application asked if he spoke a foreign language he put Enlgish. He got the job, I'm assuming because he made the interviewer laugh so hard when he read over the app. I asked him why he would put that. He said well I of course speak Amerian because I live in America & I took English in high-school so at the time it made sense. He also trys to play it off that he was nervous as it was his first job interview. Now when he mumbles something & I can't understand him...I'll ask him to let me know if he's speaking American or English so I can translate it as I am not bilingual.LOL!

S.L.H.

Since my grandmother spoke only Spanish and I spoke only English I used to believe different languages were generational and English was created by my cohorts

Chris Ayala

When I was a child I was believing that everybody who speaks other language than Turkish (my mother language) were aliens who are discovering the World...That is why they were travelling the touristic places!

ouch!

I remember thinking that non-English speakers were much smarter because they could speak "so much faster."

Anon