language

I used to believe…

When I was little I thought This Old Man was "Dissell Man" and the only "man" I could think of was a snowman. When the song says "This Old Man came rolling home" I pictured a snowman, completely adorned, on its side rolling up to my back door.

I used to believe…

You know how on machines it sometimes says mfg after the brand name (for manufacturing) well for a long time I thought it was short for motherf*cking and wondered why they would put a swear word on the machine

I used to believe that "according" meant playing the accordion, since it sounded like accordion.

I used to be in a class with a girl whose last name was Lurdet. I kept mishearing it as Lordette and thought that a lordette was the female version of a lord.

I used to believe…

One of my big sister's friends was reading a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book. I was afraid of it because I believed if you read it, you would actually be transformed into an animal.

I used to believe…

When I first saw Highlights magazine, I used to believe that the slogan "Fun with a Purpose" was actually "Fun with a Person", and meant that Highlights should only be read with other people. I always read it alone anyway...

I used to believe that when my mother was going to run errands, that she was actually going to the retailer called "Aaron's". I was confused when we never went there!

I used to believe…

Reading the newspaper one day I came across the word rape. I asked my father what it meant. He replied to me that it was a sort of a salt. His manner didn't invite further questions. It was not until many years later that I understood that he had said assault.

I used to believe…

You know how a bunch of people on this section have posted beliefs saying that they used to write the letter E with as many horizontal lines as they wanted? Well, my sister used to do something similar to the letter S. She thought the letter S could go back and forth as many times as she wanted. She has an S in her name, so she would write her name with a weird scribble instead of an S. If you've ever drawn random zig-zags in your journal while bored in class, it looked just like that, only smaller.

I knew a boy in first grade who didn't think people from England spoke English. As best I can figure it, he figured that accents qualified as other languages.

I used to believe…

In first grade, I thought that if I've never heard of a word before, then it wasn't a word.

I've always misunderstood the phrase "you can never have too many friends."

I took it to mean that "having too many friends is bad, therefore it should never happen."

I was wondering why it would be a bad thing to have too many friends, and suddenly it hit me that I was misinterpreting it!

I used to believe…

When I was like 4 or 5, I loved those Sesame Street movies where Big Bird visits other countries. I really liked learning Japanese words in "Big Bird in Japan", but unfortunately almost all the words they focused on sounded exactly like English words: "hai" (yes) sounds like "hi", "ohayou" (good morning) sounds like "Ohio", and "ichi, ni, san" (one, two, three), sounds like "itchy, knee, sun." Because of this, I thought for a time that Japanese, and probably other languages besides English, had all the same words as English, but the meanings were just switched around.

I used to live in Florida, so I used to believe the FL OZ measurements on drinks and shampoo were FLORIDA ounces, and each state had its own unit for measuring liquid.

I thought the word "eerie" meant that someone had big ears. When my teacher told me that my Halloween costume made me look "eerie", I got quite offended!

I used to believe…

When I whas 7, I learned my first "bad" word, my mother told me that only criminals use that word.
so i was always thinking that if i say any bad word, the police would come and put me in jail.