speaking

When I was little, I thought "navy" meant dark, because "navy blue" was a dark shade of blue. I didn't know what the navy was. So one time, when trying to describe a sort of forest green color, I called it "navy green".

When my uncle (who I was describing the color to) corrected me, I tried to cover up by saying "I knew that, but navy *also* means dark, like Navy Blue." I thought he wouldn't know any better. :P

Anon

That "This morning" was "The Smorning"
And "This afternoon" was "The Safternoon"

Yeah....

Anon

Remember the show "Wide World of Sports" that was hosted by Jim McKay? The show opened with McKay saying "Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport… the thrill of victory… and the agony of defeat… the human drama of athletic competition… This is ABC's Wide World of Sports! For the longest time, even into my adulthood, I thought "agony of defeat" was "agony of the feet."

Connie

After being corrected for saying "doin'" instead of "doing", my friend's daughter decided it was bad grammar to pronounce ANY word with an "-n" sound at the end. For years she added a g to the ends of words- "button"became "butting", "kitten" was "kitting". She even called a classmate "Kristing".

Anon

I used to believe that tourists and terrorists were the same thing.

Anon

I used to think the phrase "stark raving madness" was "star craving madness". It seemed a peculiar turn of phrase, as I'd never heard of anyone craving stars. On the other hand if anyone did crave stars, it is understandable how that might be associated with madness of some kind.

Monica

Until very recently, I thought "archives" was pronounced like "are chives".

Mitsuki

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".

Jt

I used to believe that the word "artificial" was actually "art official," like artifical flavored candy was some sort of official art or something.

that same kid who wanted a sister named dashalina

i used to swear down that the word huge was spelt and pronounced 'fuge' this resulted in a major fight with my friend at the age of 7, and because he was a boy and i was a girl he won. I believed for ages that if id won the fight then the word would have been 'fuge.'

DietLemonade

I used to think that babies could communicate with eachother, just as adults communicate with eachother. I just assumed there was "baby's English" and then "adult English". I also theorized that if you were at JUST the right age, (for example: 3 year, 7 months and two days old) you would be able to speak both languages.

At the time, I had a cousin who was 3 years old and her brother was just a baby. Me and my cousins all believed in my theory. We sought to exploit my 3-year old cousin and create a "baby translation company". :)

Moose

When I was young, I went to go see the movie 'Titanic' with my mother. Good idea for a family movie, right? I specifically remember the scene when Jack is showing Rose his sketch book, and the drawings of the one-legged prostitute. I thought 'prostitute' was a fancy word for politician. I thought that she probably wasn’t a very good one if she kept on being naked all the time. The sad thing is, I kept on thinking prostitute=politician until I was a teenager. Of course, now that I'm older I know it’s the other way around.

Anon

I used to believe when someone said "...as far as the eye can see...", that they were speaking of the Ican Sea. I also believed that the Ican Sea was somewhere in Europe. So, it's pretty far away (at least from where I was).

Robert

I used to believe that the word 'circumstances' was pronounced 'circus dancers'.

Mel

I used to believe that British people were jealous of Americans because only Americans can pronounce the letter "r" correctly.

Ray D. Strawhat

One day when I was about 7 or 8 my guy friend from across the street came over. He was always bragging about anything he could think of, so one day I told him I could speak Cherokee, he asked me to prove it and I just blurted out some random made up words. My dad had been BBQing just a few feet away and when I stopped "talking" he said "Pretty good Cherokee sweetie."
After that I had completely convinced my friend that I could speak Cherokee, and my dad had convinced me that I could too.

I was about 11 when I finally figured out that he was kidding.

Little Lies Alot

I used to think that Italian was just English with O and A at the end!

Rochelle Peachey

I went to a day camp for two weeks when I was 7. It was run by school teachers and were called counselors, a word I didn't know. After several days of our classes being swapped around or not having certain ones, I was convinced the adults were "cancelers" because they were canceling the classes.

Jay

I used to believe GPS stood for Ginormous Processing System.

Babre

I used to think that retarded was the same word as retired.

Anon