My family speaks German, and as a child I didn't grasp the concept of foreign languages. So when I first heard my aunt's husband, who was from Hungary, say a German word (as opposed to some Gibberish I couldn't understand), I exclaimed: "Look! Uncle Georg can speak!"
I still hear this regularly from my relatives.
A childhood belief about foreign languages
others believed things like this
- I used to think it was illegal to speak German in Germany because of World War Two.— Anonymous
- Since Germans speak German, I thought Jewish people spoke Jewish.— Lori
- I would speak in gidderish, convinced that it was some foreign language I had never heard of— Molly
- I didn't quite grasp the concept of time zones, and thought that Chinese kids went to school at night.— Giselle
- When people would ask me what was my background, I would tell them 1/2 German and 1/2 Brooklyn!— Randy
- I was afraid of my grandma because i thought she had germs because she was german!Anon