For the longest time, I thought the word "thorough" was just poeple spelling "through" incorrectly. I don't even know when I finally figured it out.

Shanna

Whenever I went to the department store with my mom and saw the heading "lingerie" I thought you pronounced it leangeree. So when I found some fancy undergarments in my moms drawers I asked her why she had leangeree and if it was for a fancy dance. I don't think she ever knew what I was talking about...

Kiersten

I believed that "hamster" was spelled "hampster". I didn't believe Mum, even when she showed me the correct spelling in the dictionary. I assumed the dictionary was wrong.
This is from the same child who could spell "chameleon" at age 5. Most of the kids I knew didn't know what a chameleon was.

Rachel

I always thought that the letter A was red, B was green, C was golden yellow... and so on, to Z which was black. I haven't the slightest idea where I got that (seeing how words are printed all in black in books) but it just seemed logical. When someone tried to show me how to spell my name using a blue crayon, I yelled "That's not how you make a A!"

Similer deal with numbers, whose colours mixed when you added them. Oddly enough, I still think of colour in this way.

Ana Byrd

When I was about 5 years old we used to visit my dad's family in a province called "Michoacan". The word "Mi", in spanish, means "My", so I thought "Choacan" was owned by my father. Every summer I kept asking my dad to take us to his "Choacan"... Everybody laughed really hard, and it took several years for me to understand why, despite repeated attempts to explain it to me!

Ivan V.

I used to belive there were two N's in the alphabet, one after M and one before Z.

Anon

I thought that no matter how you arranged any letters, it would always make a word. So 1 day when my teacher was asking for spelling words to put on a test, i Suggested ngfzztplk or something like that and everybody was like huh?

ediop

I was raised in Florida, but my mom is from new england and they always drop "R's" and add them in different places when speaking. Like car is pronounced just "ca". Well, until I was 9 or so I thought that "idea" was actually "idear" with an "R" on the end. When my friend pointed out the truth I was so embarassed. My teachers must have thought I was a complete idiot. It was totally my mothers fault.

Anon

When I was little I thought that I had forgotten a letter of the alphabet somewhere between G and L and that unless I could remember what it was no one would be able to spell anymore.

James

My husbands family went out to eat as a family when he was young to "Chilies." Well if you look at their sign the "l" kind of curls into the first "i" and makes it look like a "J". So my husbands siblings convinced him that Chilies was really Chijies, pronounced Chejees. He called it Chejees until he was 18, but now the whole family calls it that just to make fun of him... guilty as charged!

Kiersten

I used to believe that if you got all of the letters of a word such as "stop", it didn't matter what order they were in. So, on my first spelling test I was very upset with the teacher who marked my spelling of "ptso" wrong. I was convinced that all the letters were there, so I should get credit.

Anon

I used to think "Zed" and "Zee" were two different letters.

Anon

When I was in middle school I had to write a paper for English. I remember my mom proof read it and looked at me confused and asked me to clarify by the phrase "I ran next store to borrow bread". I guess each time people would say "next door" I heard "next store". I remember arguing with her about it because I knew I was RIGHT!
It was a harsh reality that day!

Anon

When I was little I told my parents that I knew how to spell the word light. When they asked me how I told them it was "O-N-O-F-F". They were mystified until they realized that I had been reading the letters printed on the lightswitch!

Amandajulie

I used to believe that the letter P, in the alphabet song, was very special, because when you sung the song it sounded like you were supposed to say: ...H,I,J,K,"elemeno" P...(say it out loud). I thought the word "elemeno" meant something very special about the letter P. I later realized that I had been stringing the letters L,M,N and O into one sound...it's funny, cause it never occurred to me that those letters were not in my alphabet song, even though I knew they existed.

Rebecca

When I was little i thought that cursive was a grown-up language that was made up of just circles so when i wanted to send a parent a secret message i would put endless connected circles and got mad at my parent when they couldn't read it

gay_dude

I used to think that when people sang the alphabet and got to T,U,V,W,X,Y and Z. i thought and was a letter untill i was about 6.

Ne gurl

i used to think there were two n's in the alphabet. the normal one plus one in between y and z because when you say y and z it sounds like y n z

Anon

u know how at the end of the abcs it goes now i know MY abcs?well,i used to think u had to take all the letters and rearrange them to make your own.

Anon

Until second grade I thought that the word recipe was pronounced "re-sipe". I had heard people say "reh-su-pe" but I thought that was a different word that meant exactly the same thing. I wondered why nobody ever used "re-sipe" when speaking.

Chris C.