When I was 5 years old, a new girl joined my class from Germany, I had no idea she was from another country until later on when I was riding in the car with her and her mother and they began speaking to one another in German. I thought all foreign people must look different to me, and because they looked the same as me, it never crossed my mind that they might be from another place, actually I don't think I'd heard of foreign languages existing at all. I spent the entire car journey listening really hard and panicking because I couldn't understand why their words made no sense to me. I really thought I was going mad. You can imagine my relief when I discovered my brain was working again when I met up with my mother at the end of the journey.
A childhood belief about foreign languages
others believed things like this
- I heard my mum talking about foreign people, and I later asked, "have you ever been to Foreign?"— Kia
- I used to believe that anyone speaking a foreign language translated it into english in their head— galen
- I used to believe that people who were speaking foreighn languages were just speaking gibberish.— Zoe
- I would speak in gidderish, convinced that it was some foreign language I had never heard of— Molly
- I used to think that foreign people coughed and sneezed in a different language.— Even more stupid
- I used to believe that all Christians were English and all other religious people were foreign.Anon