language

I used to believe that l-m-n-o-p was one letter.

I used to believe…

It always confused me when my mom would ask someone what "percent" certain they were, and they would answer 80% or 90%. I thought, if you're certain, you're certain, and these people all must have an agreed upon number that would mean they are certain. Finally, my mom asked me the question one day, and I asked her "out of what number?" I thought it was a perfectly intelligent question (since the number could be anything) and she said 100. So I was 100% certain. What bothered me though, was that I would still hear other people quote other percents, yet my mom always told me the number was 100. It took me a while to realize you didn't always have to be 100% certain!

i used to swear down that the word huge was spelt and pronounced 'fuge' this resulted in a major fight with my friend at the age of 7, and because he was a boy and i was a girl he won. I believed for ages that if id won the fight then the word would have been 'fuge.'

I am third-generation Japanese (my grandparents were born in Japan and moved to the United States). My brother and sister used to believe that when they were young, they would only know English, when they were our parents' age, they would know both English and Japanese, and when they were our grandparents' age, they would forget the English and only speak Japanese.

I thought that the letters of the alphabet could be spelled and I would ask my older sister how to spell "B" (I thought "bee") or "S" (I thought "ess"). I thought that everything had to be spelled.

I never understood why booger wasn't spelled like sugar.

I used to believe…

When I was little I told my parents that I knew how to spell the word light. When they asked me how I told them it was "O-N-O-F-F". They were mystified until they realized that I had been reading the letters printed on the lightswitch!

I used to associate words with mental images...I had many, but the only one I can remember to this day was the word "Friday" conjured up an image of the king of spades.

I used to believe…

My cousin used to climb under the electric fence without hesitation and she would yell over to me "Come on, what is the matter-- are you a-scared?"
I said "Ascared?" She just shrugged and went about her buisness. I finally figured out that if you were A-Fraid then you must be A-scared in her little 8 year old mind. I still think about it and it cracks me up!

I used to believe…

My cousin & I were the 2 oldest, we began speaking our own language he was 11 and i was 7. We really thought we understood eachother, and we really thought we were speaking spanish. To this day we don't know what the heck it was! Our family loves to tell that story.

I grew up as a foreign national in the United States. At home we only spoke our language. Since my dad worked, I rarely went out in the neighbourhood with him, so at three years of age, I concluded that my dad couldn't speak English. I never heard him speak a word of it, so that meant he couldn't speak English!(My mom could - I had heard her talk to the neighbours, etc.) One rare time my dad was taking me to the park and we were approached by a neighbour, and I got all set to translate, so imagine my shock when my dad started speaking English!
Kids...if it is outside of our little view of reality, we simply conclude it can't exist!

I used to believe…

When i was about 6 i though that english was a mix of all the languages in the world because in the US they spoke english and people in the US where from all over the world.

I used to believe that photos of people in magazines or books, if they were looking straight at you from the photo; then they could REALLY see you and everything you were doing. It still creeps me out to this day, a little.

I used to believe…

In order to learn another language, one must first learn English. Since both of my parents spoke 2 different native languages and spoke English to each other. They had originally met each other in yet another country and my sister learned that language and translated for them.

Rock and Roll could only be sung in American English. I had never heard R'nR in any other language and further evidenced by the Brits who didn't have their accents when they sang.

This came down like the 'Wall' when at the age of 10 I saw a German-Russian translation book on my grandmother's shelf. I commented that it was a stupid publication because one would still need German-to-English and then English-to-Russian books to use it.

Even 8 years later, with some conversational grasp of 3 languages, I was still amazed to meet people that themselves spoke 3 or 4 languages but we couldn't converse because none of the 7 languages were the same! {How ethnocentric!!! (not in superiority, but can only relation to self)}
Maybe all we do in America _is_ sleep all the time! ;-)---see entry by Sandy (Sydney Australia)

I use to think the Taj Mahal in India was actually the Tajma Hall, a place to have meetings. I though this until I was probably 15.

I used to think that schedule was written as 'scegual'. Made sense to me.