My Aunt is Greek so when we were little, she and my Greek cousins taught us all sorts of Greek words. For some reason, I got the idea that "penis" was the Greek word for everyones' private parts so I told everyone in my dance class that I had a penis.

becky

Up until kindergarten I believed that English was a foreign language and that the language I spoke had no name. Once we sang a song in English then sang the translation in Spanish. After the Spanish version I announced to the teachers/class that I wanted to sing in English. When they said we already had I became very angry and started to argue. I said that I already knew what Spanish, French, and German sounded like and that no one had ever spoke to me in English. I became very concerned that people were trying to "hide" English from me for some reason. It took a few more weeks before someone figured out what I was thinking.

Catherine

When I was a little girl, all of the older members of my family spoke the language of their home country. I used to think that when you got old, you automatically knew how to speak Yiddish.

Sherry

I used to think that as 'wee' meant 'yes' in French 'poo' must mean 'no'

Well, it made sense to me at the time ;)

Jo

My friend convinced me he was American and i used to bug him every day - "Go on, say something in American" and he'd make up some random gibberish and I really thought he was speaking American. We're both English. I believed all the cop shows like Kojak were set in London and those were London accents.

Anon

When I first learned about French, I thought that every word in English would be the same in Freanch, except 'le' or 'la' would be in front.

Not long after my discovery, I met a girl named Larissa. I had never heard such a funny name before and assumed that it was French (it's actually Russian). That night I looked in my dictionary and found that Rissa means 'the genus Laridae'.

Genus is a species, and Laridae is the scientific name for 'gull' as in the kind of bird.

From then on I thought that my friend turned into a seagull every night and would turn back into a little girl in the morning so she could go to school.

Marshmello Da Strawberry Cow

It wasn't me but my grandmother used to believe that everybody spoke Catalan and Sapnish. And thus she would say things like: How intelligent the Brittish children are, they are so little and they already speak English!

Farners

I'm Irish when I was little I used to think I was living in England because everyone spoke English and that we had to learn Irish in school because Ireland had taken over the world, oh what a fool I was.

Stephen Cullen

I heard my mum talking about foreign people, and I later asked, "have you ever been to Foreign?"

Kia

I grew up in Estonia, speaking Estonian. When I was nine, my dad moved to Sweden and after about 6 months me, sister and mum went to visit him. I knew that in Sweden people spoke Swedish, so I was convinced that once we'd get off the boat in Sweden and met dad we would all speak Swedish to each other and understand it perfectly. And when we returned to Estonia we would speak Estonian again... When we actually arrived I was very confused as to why we still spoke Estonian and, worse, why I couldn't understand what other ppl around me were saying....

Poppin

When I was young I used to be amazed when I watched news programmes where someone was being interviewed and you could see dozens of microphones shoved in their face. I thought that each microphone automatically translated the speakers words into a different language so that everyone in the world would be able to understand it!

Sarah

I remember when we had German at school, a boy in my class thought 'Notizen' (notes) was pronounced 'no-tits-then'!!! Hours of laughs when he read it out one day.....!

Conifer

when I was little, I thought that each foreign language was just a 'code', + you could learn it by finding out which letters represented which. The only foreign word I knew was 'oui', so I had a starting point for learning French:
Y=O
E=U
S=I
I was dying to find something writen in French so I could crack more of the code...

Nin

When I was a toddler, I had lots of toddler friends who were non-English speakers, but I had no concept of different languages and just thought that they had their own words for things. We all just spoke our own language and listened in eachother's languages. I understood "pass the red crayon" in three languages and had no idea I had language skills.

anon

For the longest time I thought Pig Latin was an actual language that they spoke in a part of Europe.

Anon

When i was little i used to think that when a foreign person spoke subtitles would appear, like in a foreign movie or something.

Nuno

When I was about 8 years old my mom took me to the shoe store. I thought the woman who attended to us talked funny and I asked my mom why. My mom said it was because she had an accent. (She had a French accent). I missheard what she had said. I thought my mom said 'accident' and for years I thought people who talked funny had been in accidents!!

Catwoman=^..^=

As a child I knew that in Israel the language spoken was Hebrew. Since my exposure to Hebrew was limited to the chanting I heard at Synagogue, I assumed that in Israel people went around chanting to each other all day.

Alex S.

I used to believe that when people wrote in cursive, they were writing in Spanish.

Ellen

There is a Jordanian who owns a local restaurant/grocery close to where I live. I speak Arabic, so I like to speak it with him. He is Muslim, so I usually throw out an "As Salaam Alaikum" when I enter his store. 2 days ago, I was in a rush, so I yelled out the Arabic equivalent of "How are you?" to him instead, on my way to the back of his store. An older American couple, were in the store.

When I got up to the counter with my items, my friend said "That couple just apologized for your rudeness, & assured me that all Americans were not as intolerant as you." I laughed so hard that I cried.
The phonetic Arabic for "How are you" is "Eh, fuhkoo."

Taylor