foreign languages
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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?
top belief!
When I was young I used to believe that people who spoke different languages only understood each other because they had different brains which heard the words in English
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.
top belief!
When I was little, I remember asking my dad why people that spoke other languages didn't just "learn how to speak normal" like we did. I thought English was the regular way to speak and other languages were just made up nonsense.
Victoria
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
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
top belief!
I used to think Braille was the language they used in Brazil. I don't think I knew that Braille was the raised dots on everything.
top belief!
When I was little I used to think that everyone in the whole world spoke English. No matter what. So whenever I heard someone speak another language I would always wonder why they would go through the trouble of thinking in English and then speaking a whole different language.
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
top belief!
When I was small I believed that there was a secret trick to turn English into any new language, as with Pig Latin. Perhaps a more complex trick with a few new sounds, but a pattern that could be easily learned. Then I began French lessons. The first week we were told about an important "irregular" verb (etre - to be), but that most were regular. So I still expected to learn the secret trick the next week. When I discovered I would have to learn every single french word, I was surprised and immensely disappointed.
Jennifer
top belief!
Used to believe that Spanish was just English with random o's and a's tagged to the end of the words (probably because there are many cognates that are formed in just that way).
Also believed that the written forms of languages were merely coded English, and if I could just figure out which letters/symbols stood for which English letters, I could read them.
Steven
top belief!
As a child i grew up in england but spoke portguese at home. I didn't know anyone outside of my family who could speak it, therefore i believed that portuguese was a language invented by my family and used only by my family
I don't totally recall how this worked, but I was convinced that there were various languages in the world: French, Chinese, etc. but English was "the REAL language" and referred to it as such.
Darren
top belief!
I am from Scotland, and I used to believe that Gaelic was the language they spoke on an island called Garlic, situated off the north coast of Scotland.
Mairi
As a child, I believed that anyone who spoke a foreign language had to translate it into English in their heads in order to understand it.
Nicole
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