language

I used to believe…

For some reason when i was little, i don't think i knew what public was, either that or i couldn't read, anyway, i thought 'Public' toilets were Pubic toilets. The strange thing was, i don't think i knnew what pubic was either.

I used to believe…

In the eighth grade, a classmate of min was reading one of Jane Austen's novels for one of her book reports. I asked her what it was about. She told me that Jane Austen was once abducted by aliens and that her novels were about her experiences while so abducted. Later when I first tried reading Jane Austen, I decided that my former classmate must have been crazy for trying to tackle such a thing as early as the eighth grade, for Jane Austen is NOT easy reading. Since I never ran into that classmate again after middle school, I guess I'll never know for sure whether she had quite an advanced aptitude for understanding Jane Austen, or whether she actually WAS crazy (possibly in more ways than one). In any event, I must have believed for several years that Jane Austen was abducted by aliens.

I used to believe that if you said a swear word, God would send a bolt of thunder and strike you dead right where you stood. One day when I was feeling quite reckless and perhaps stupid, I stood in the middle of my bedroom and said the "F" word out loud. And, lo and behold, I'm still here.

I told my younger sister that "flipping heck" was a swear word. She believed me and never said it again.

I used to believe…

A while ago I was out with some friends and I met some of their other friends who I didn't know. We were about 15. My friend said something about her being from Germany, and one of these guys I didn't know said he could swear in German. She said 'Go on then' and he said something I didn't understand. My friend who spoke German then laughed uncontrollably for a while and then managed to tell us he'd said something along the lines of "You beer bottle!".

I used to believe…

English is not my native language, I started learning it when I was 10. Until high school, I used to believe that there was an English word "ough", which meant insufficient, and "enough" was its negated version.

I used to believe…

When I first heard the phrase "survival of the fittest," (probably around age 7 or 8) I had no idea what the word "fittest" meant and believed that people really meant "fattest"! ^_^

I never heard the word 'crap' until I was 18, when a group of workmates were discussing a boozy night out.

They roared with laughter as one of them described crawling drunkenly under some bushes for what I heard as a 'crab'.

Why, I wondered, would he go in the bushes for a crab, and why would one be there, and how would he know anyway, and what use was a crab to a drunk?

Puzzled me for a very long time, that one.

I used to see that commercial advertising for the grocery store "Fiesta" when I was little...This lady would always be on the commercials and at the end she would say "FIESTA". I used to think that the lady was pronouncing it wrong and that it was really Fiester. I thought she was just putting some accent flair on the end of the word...I used to correct her out loud. I would say, "No, it's Fiester!!"

I used to believe…

As a child I knew that in Israel the language spoken was Hebrew. Since my exposure to Hebrew was limited to the chanting I heard at Synagogue, I assumed that in Israel people went around chanting to each other all day.

I used to be confused on how I was to respond when I asked someone, "do you mind if I blah blah blah?" Some people would be like, "no go right ahead!" While others would say, "yes do what you like!" So I would stand there and be like, "ummm, so can I?"

I used to believe…

Somewhere down the line of growing up, I lost the 'L' in flashlight. Even now as an adult I still tend to say "fashlight" instead and have to actually think about the word before saying it.

I used to believe…

When I was little, I was confused with the decimal system. It's easier to show as an example how I counted: "..., twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven, twenty-twelve", and so on. When the count reached "twenty-nineteen", the next number (twenty-twenty) just didn't seem to make sense. It took me over a year to realize that the number after 29 is 30.

I used to believe that "God bless you" was "gableshu," so everytime someone sneezed, I would say "gableshu."

I used to think that once meant 2, and twice meant 3.

I used to think everyone in the world spoke english and that other languages were just secret code words. like gibberish or pig latin.