Having to emigrate to an English-speaking country at the tender age of 12 with English that I learnt by rote in school, I spoke an alien kind of English, with text-book big words wrapped in an unfortunate grammar and an even more unfortunate accent.
Needless to say I was much parodied in school. But one thing I don't quite get was why my classmates insisted I say 'orgasm' when I said 'organism' in science class. I insisted that they are missing a syllable, while the nastier ones insisted that that was the way it's spoken. Fortunately I have never wavered in my belief - being the bookworm that I am, I found out what's what from a dictionary. I always played dumb though to wind them up!
A childhood belief about speaking
others believed things like this
- I used to think that even people who spoke something other than English, thought in English— Peaches
- I used to believe that "elemeno P" was a certain kind of "P" found only in the English language. Anon
- I used to believe that anyone speaking a foreign language translated it into english in their head— galen
- I used to believe that everybody spoke English in the worldAnon
- I know my dog, Palmer, spoke English, he was just really quiet.
— Klayne P. - I used to believe that the whole world spoke the same language- English.Anon