language: speaking

For years I believed that "giblets" was a made-up word my parents used to describe me and my siblings. My maiden name was Gibbs, so "giblets" obviously meant "little Gibbses". It makes perfect sense. I was in my teens before I figured it out.

Whilst going on holiday once, my mother starting talking about how emigrating really appealled to her. My sister who was only young at the time came out with the classic line.... Who's Emma Grating? thinking that mum was talking of a person.

I used to believe…

6 year old : I want to watch this film!
Dad : No you don't. It's about romance.
6 year old : So?
Dad : You don't like romance.
6 year old : What's wrong with romance?
Dad : Do you even know what rhe word means?
6 year old : Sure I do! People who live in Rome!

I opened the car window a crack and my mother told me to shut it because I'd "catch a draft," which I interpreted as "catch a giraffe." I didn't question the sense of it, and just assumed it meant "to get a chill." I think I must have been learning about idioms at the time ("have a cow", etc.), because it seemed perfectly natural to have an expression that made no sense literally.

I consistently misheard "Dracula" as "Jack Lear" and that's who I was every Halloween until the third grade. I also believed that "The United States of America" was both spoken and spelled as one long word, and I spelled it phonetically for all of the 1st grade.

When I asked my father the meaning of the word "peon," he said it was something that you would "pee on." Like an idiot, I not only believed this well into my teens, but was only corrected after I announced it to my whole physics class.

My grandmother was fond of proverbs and would often say "you know what they say..." or "they say that..." When I was little I came to the conclusion that "they" were a group of people in an offfice somewhere, whose job was to sit around all day coming up with sayings and proverbs.

When I was about five or so I overheard my uncle talking about how something cost him "50 bucks." I asked him what bucks were, and he said "dollars," but I thought he said "dolls." For the longest time I couldn't figure out what my uncle was doing with a bunch of dolls and why anyone wanted to give him stuff for them.

A friend of mine got into an argument with this metalhead guy. The metalhead guy thought the expression "play it by ear" was actually "play it by air." Personally, I don't know where "ear" comes from, but "air" sounds even more stupid. He was 18 at the time.

Because my grandfather spoke very quietly and very gravelly, I came to believe that we were born with a limited supply of speech and if we used it all up we'd be mute at the ends of our lives. I began trying to conserve words, as though they were a limited resource.

When I was a kid, my parents had their own language. No, that's not my weird belief yet - be patient.

It was just spelling aloud, but using a short word for each consonant. B becomes "Bub", C becomes "Cut", H becomes "Hash", etc. Also, to double a letter, precede it with "Square". Hence the word "butter" would be rendered as "Bub U Square Tut E Rud." With a little practice you can learn to speak and understand it very quickly. My parents used it constantly to talk in front of the kids without us knowing what they were saying.

When I was eight, I broke the code (not transliterating the vowels finally gave me the clue that they were just spelling. After that it was simple.) I was smart enough to solve the code, but too stupid to keep my mouth shut. I promptly told everyone how clever I was. If I'd really been clever I'd have eavesdropped on them for years.

When much younger, I took words very literally. Imagine my young male horror when, after having been sick for a week, I had to go to a "makeup" class for Tennis.

Until about a year ago I thought the word "misled" was pronounced like "mistle-d" (as in 'mistletoe'). It was the past tense of the verb "to misle". I am not sure how the lightning of truth finally struck and I realized it was mis-LED.

I started a new job, and there was a guy name Eddie Portorica (who I did not know). When ever someone wanted Eddie they would call over the loud speaker for him. For the longest time I always thought they were saying "Any Puerto Rican" call this number. I always thought that there was a group there that were from Puerto Rico... Until I finally meet Eddie

In my neighborhood growing up, all the older people were refugees and they all had thick accents. I thought that when people got "old", they began to speak with accents.

For years I heard the expression "black as the ace of spades" as "black as the ace of SPACE!" I finally learnt the truth when we were sat down at dinner and I challenged my Dad with "how do you know, have you ever been there?" when he said the aforementioned expression!

I used to believe that the word "albeit" was pronounced "al-bait." It wasn't until I looked it up in the dictionary that I learned that is a contraction of "all be it!"

As a child, I had a hard time understanding why you had to give the store clerk "tacks" with the money. I also thought it was unfair that "miners" could not buy beer.