language

I used to believe…

When much younger, I took words very literally. Imagine my young male horror when, after having been sick for a week, I had to go to a "makeup" class for Tennis.

I believed till probably about 11 years that the word "hassle" was profanity, from my father's livid use of it at one time. I think I confused it with a similar sounding word.

I used to believe…

Until about a year ago I thought the word "misled" was pronounced like "mistle-d" (as in 'mistletoe'). It was the past tense of the verb "to misle". I am not sure how the lightning of truth finally struck and I realized it was mis-LED.

I used to think that the British were very snobbich, because they thought they were too good to make the "long e" sound.

I had yet to discover what accents were.

I started a new job, and there was a guy name Eddie Portorica (who I did not know). When ever someone wanted Eddie they would call over the loud speaker for him. For the longest time I always thought they were saying "Any Puerto Rican" call this number. I always thought that there was a group there that were from Puerto Rico... Until I finally meet Eddie

I thought 1000 was the highest number invented.

I didn't know some swear words were worse than others.
My third grade teacher pulled three of us into the hall and made us tell the bad words we were saying on the way to school. My friends said, " I said damn" and "I said shit," so to be different, I said " I said fuck." The teacher grabbed me and said, "Do you know what that means?"
I didn't, and I sure didn't say it again for a long, long time...

I used to believe…

My immigrant family tended not to interact very much with neighbors, so I seldom played with kids outside the family. So I thought that the people in my family were the only people in the whold world who knew any "bad words." I couldn't imagine that anyone else knew them, much less would say them.

You can't imagine my shock when I got to college and was living in a dorm with others my age. They knew the very same bad words! And what's more, they actually said them out loud. I couldn't figure out how they had learned them on their own.

I used to believe…

In my neighborhood growing up, all the older people were refugees and they all had thick accents. I thought that when people got "old", they began to speak with accents.

I used to believe…

When I was younger I was told by my parents that "foxy" was a bad word. Years later I went to the school library and was shocked to find the book "Foxy" on the shelf. I was so afraid to check it out of the library because I was sure that the librarian would contact my parents to tell them that I had checked it out so I sat there and read it at the library. After finishing the book (it was about a little fox and her adventures) I honestly thought that my parents were crazy to think that foxy was a worse word than shit, cock or fu*k.

I used to believe…

For years I heard the expression "black as the ace of spades" as "black as the ace of SPACE!" I finally learnt the truth when we were sat down at dinner and I challenged my Dad with "how do you know, have you ever been there?" when he said the aforementioned expression!

I used to believe that the word "albeit" was pronounced "al-bait." It wasn't until I looked it up in the dictionary that I learned that is a contraction of "all be it!"

I thought that "bastard" meant turkey, so I said to my dad, "You bastard." He told Mom, who made me look it up in the dictionary and apologize. (He was the 6th son out of 12 children)

I used to think it was illegal for swear words to appear in print. Then one day, a classmate brought Frederick Forsyth's novel "The Odessa File" to school and showed us a page that had the F word on it. I was shocked but pleasantly surprised to see it, and as we read that sentence to each other, we felt like rebels!

I used to believe…

In my first year of teaching, I had one of my second graders come up to me and tell me that Johnny had called him the "E" word. Knowing the "A,B,C,D and F" words in their entirety, I had NO idea what the "E" word was. So I asked Johnny to whisper in my ear what the dreaded "E" word was... so Johnny said. "Idiot". I about died laughing on the spot.

i used to believe that you could communicate with anyone in the world by simply spelling out the English sentence one letter at a time using the pronunciation of their alphabet.