foreign languages

I used to believe that to people that spoke a different language, they still heard it in English. My philosophy was that their ears translated their foreign language into English, and my ears didn't have that, so I couldn't understand them.

Anon

Since my grandmother spoke only Spanish and I spoke only English I used to believe different languages were generational and English was created by my cohorts

Chris Ayala

I used to believe that everyone spoke English and that they just used translator devices in their ears.

Anon

When I was a child I was convinced the white noise on our TV was a language that meant something to someone we just did understand it.

Michael

When I was little I used to think foreign languages don't exist and that people just pretend. That they, in fact, translate each word from my language into another in their head and then speak out. That the world essentially only has one language. Mine, of course. I'm a linguist now :-)

Ana

I was just reading some beliefs and I was getting a little curious about this "Anon" that kept posting (and I wasn't sure if that person was man or woman)..so I clicked on the name and it said "I'm sorry this is an ANONymous post"!!! (english is not my native language!). LOL!!!

josefina

Both my parents were born and raised in Cuba, so as a little girl in the U.S. my first language was Spanish and I learned English while learning to read and write (required for my preschool) and at first I only wrote LIKE THIS IN ALL CAPS. I thought THIS was "Spanish letters" and this was "English letters" Later, I thought the same about cursive and print. Print was "Spanish" and cursive "English" In my defense, my parents did not try to set me straight which led to embarassing moments.

Se.eS

when i was younger i thought everyone who spoke a language other than english, actually heard english when they spoke that language. just the rest of us could not understand it

Tori

When I was a kid, I believed everyone thought in my native language. How else could people possibly understand their own thoughts?

Anon

When I was around 5 years old I went to Mexico on a vacation. I was in the pool at our hotel and this little Mexican girl came up to me because she wanted to play. I was trying to talk to her but she kept speaking in Spanish and I couldn't understand her. I thought that she could understand english and that's what it would be in her head, but since she was born in Mexico she HAD to speak Spanish.

Anon

Up until I took a 3rd year of spanish i thought everyone thought in english. I figured out it was wrong when i started thinking in spanish

Anon

When i was a child I used to believe that English was Spanish, but written backwards. So I thought that blue was said "luza" (azul). I used to speak like that all the time.

Natalia-Colombia

When I was a kid I used to believe that when people spoke in languages other than english, their brains somehow converted the sounds INTO english, so that they would hear it in english and could therefore understand it.

drfish

I used to believe that foreign languages just had different letters, and if you knew what the letters sounded like it would make sense in English.

Ima Hogg