language

I used to believe…

When I was little, I spent a brief period of time for reasons I don't remember under the impression that to "swear" meant to tell lies at school.

I used to believe…

When I was a kid and was misbehaving at my grandparents' house, my grandfather, who was an Army veteran, told me if I didn't shape up he'd "put me on report". I then would turn around and tell my mom when my parents got back that he said he was going to "put me on the porch".

I used to believe…

As a kid I read the line "won't stick to most dental work" on the side of chewing gum packages. I thought dentists must use special paper in their offices that wouldn't allow gum to stick to it.

I used to believe…

When I was in kindergarten, every Wednesday I went to this place where I visited this man who built obstacle courses for me to do. He also liked to spray shaving cream on the mats so we could write words and draw pictures in the shaving cream. One day we decided to write and solve some simple math problems in the shaving cream, and the guy wrote out one problem that really puzzled me. My brain did not certainly record my response, but I wall all like "What the heck? The letter A is not a number!" This was the first variable I ever solved for in my entire life.

I used to believe…

When my mother was very small, she wrote a page of scribble "writing" and showed it to her mother. She remarked that it wasn't "real" writing. My mother was very confused and argued that it was indeed real (in the sense of existing). She thought her mother literally couldn't see the writing.

I'm Chinese American and when I was a kid, I lived in the USA, in a small town with no other Chinese people except an elderly lady and her son who spoke a different Chinese dialect we didn't understand so we just spoke to them in English. No one else knew a word of Chinese. I used to believe that 1. Chinese is a rare language. 2. Each Chinese family spoke a different dialect of Chinese.

I used to believe…

When I was a little kid, for some unknown reason I thought the word rinse was spelled "wrince." I even argued with my dad when he corrected me.

I thought that shark was a bad word since it almost rhymes with fart!

I used to believe…

When i was little i believed that all words were the same in all languages, just that they were pronounced differently.

I used to believe…

You know that thing you use to carry load of stuff around the garden and outside? It has one wheel. Yeah, a wheelbarrow. Well until I was about 14 I thought it was called a wheelbarrel because you would put a barrel in the metal part and wheel it away!

I thought "please print" in magazine subscription forms meant you had to put your name with a printer instead of writing it without cursive!

I used to pronounce and spell the word 'both' B-O-L-T-H until I was a senior in high school. One of my friends paused my sentence and asked why I was talking so weird. I came home that night and listened to my dad speak and realized I had been imitating the way he said it.

I used to believe…

One time when I was in my backyard, I was playing with this baby toy, which probably belonged to my sister, but I'm not really sure. It was one of those toys that vibrate when a cord is pulled. I decided to have a little fun with that toy by biting the handle at the end of the cord with my teeth and letting go with my hands. It made my head vibrate, and my vision "vibrated" along with it. I went and told my dad, who was in the backyard as well. I told him that when I let go of the toy while biting the handle, it made my eyesight "blorry." He didn't know what I meant, and I was also confused because my dad was the first person I heard that word from (the correct word, of course, but I misheard). After some frustrating discussion, my dad finally figured it out, and he explained to me that the word I intended to say was not "blorry," but rather "blurry."

I used to believe that people who spoke foreign languages all translated to English in their head before speaking. It wasn't until I took a French in secondary school that I figured it out.

I used to believe…

When I was little, I pronounced "variety" veye-ar-it-ee, and kept trying to correct my Dad for pronouncing it wrong.

I used to believe…

You know that saying long time no see. Well, I used to believe that it meant that some one has seen that other person so long ago, that the sea dried out - as in no sea.