language

I used to believe…

When I was about four, I would talk all the time. My grandfather told me that we were all born with a fixed number of words and that I was using mine up too quickly. I was suitably terrified and believed that, in relative silence, for quite some time.

I used to believe…

When I was 6 years old, I somehow got the concept that counting was infinite - you could always go one higher. Naturally, I concluded that EVERY WORD is a number! So cow, pencil, and airplane were numbers, I just didn't know where they went in the whole scheme of things. This still makes sense to me.

I used to believe…

When I was around 7, someone gave our family a box of these caramel-on-a-stick candies called 'brown cows' and my step-brother at the time used to say 'have a cow/ don't have a cow' referring to the candy. I'm 25 now so the Simpsons wasn't on at the time but the first time i heard the phrase 'don't have a cow' i was convinced that someone on the street heard our family saying it and immediately dialed hollywood up and relayed this wicked-cool phrase that they'd heard a child say on the street.

i thought we invented 'don't have a cow'

I used to believe…

As a kid, I always read a lot, and read a lot of my parents' books. So there were a lot of words that I'd read (and understood) but didn't know how to pronounce.

In high school, I was preparing a Shakespearean monologue for speech class that included the word "whore". Luckily, I practiced at home first, where my mom told me that "war" was not the right way to say it. :)

I used to believe linemen ( said linnymen) was a road treatment that would cause damage to your car if you drove over it. It appears I was mistaken, and linemen are people...
Although, they will still cause damage to your car if you run over them, so I had it half right!

I used to believe…

As slow as a wet week.....
For most of my childhood I believed that a week was a small long haired animal which had trouble in the rain.

I used to believe…

A 7 year old girl that I know wanted to know why people invented words that you weren't allowed to say. (i.e. the f word)

I used to stop breathing. You know how you dont consciously breathe? Id be engorssed in a book (i love reading), and suddenly, id stop because there would be a sound missing. Then, id notice i wasnt breathing, take a deep breath, and carry on again. It was weird, because to test that it wasnt my imagination, after that happened once, i consciously held my breath for 7 minutes (best otherwise is 2:32). After wards, i was convinced that when i read a book my soul was sucked into it to talk to the charcters, adn my body got left behind, and kinda forgot to carry on working.

I live in Canada, a bilingual country (French & English). I used to believe that there was a French and English for every language. For example, Chinese had a French and an English... Spanish had a French and an English... weird.

I used to believe…

When we were little my sister and I believed the word Poo to be a rude word but Pooh as in Winnie-the-Pooh was ok. So everytime we said the word Pooh we had to say "H" afterwards or we were being naughty. We used to have terrible arguments when we accused each other of not saying the H. And the song went: "Winnie the Pooh..H, Winnie the Pooh..H" Our parents must of thought we were mad!

I used to believe…

When I was growing up, my sisters and I were not allowed to "pee" or "poop, we always had to do #1 or #2, so when I started school and had to learn the alphabet, I thought when we said L, M, N, O, P that we were really saying "elemental P" as in an something to do with "elementary school".

I used to believe…

When i was little i got told that cherry pie was a swear word and when i went to a shop some one asked for a cherry pie and i told them off for swearing! another thing is my sister told me posters have eyes so before i went to sleep i had to kiss my posters or they wud hurt me while i was sleeping!

I used to believe…

My parents went and told everybody I could do math at the tender age of 4. It would go like this: "What's 12 minus 6 ?" Me: 6. "What's 4 divided by 2?`" Me: 2.
Later, I found out the hard way, that math wasn't just about repeating the last number you heard. Oh and for a while I thought 1+1 would be 11. Made perfect sense to me.
I still suck at math...

I used to believe…

When in primary school we were taught with coloured wooden blocks marked with notches how to count, addition, subtraction etc. For example ten was always red, five green, single units were yellow. To this day I still relate colours to shapes and numbers and vice versa. Red + green = 15. I'm 34 (three yellows + four yellows) and an accountant.

I used to believe that someone speaking a different language would translate it into English in their head, then think of what they were going to say (In English)then say it in their language. Ah, the mind of the child.

I used to believe…

My younger sister always had a hard time saying "cucumbers" -- she'd pronounce it cumcubers which, to anyone past puberty, sounds pretty obscene.

My cousins used to say "hamboogers" too which never sounded like something I wanted to eat.