language: speaking

I used to pronounce the word 'nuclear' like 'nuke-yuh-lar.' My parents and brother told me that George Bush pronounced the word 'nuclear' wrong, but when people told me how he said it, I couldn't hear the difference. I assumed I was saying it correctly, though. One day my brother noticed how I said it and told me I said it like George Bush. I felt terribly stupid, but I still couldn't hear the difference, so I tried not to say the word. Finally, a friend of mine helped me say it right, "Say new. Now say clear. Now say new-clear."

As a little kid I used to think that gazebos were called "Azibos"(like the character Azibo from Panwapa).

I never saw the word "gazebo" spelled out so the first time i did, I thought it was pronounced "gayz bo" and that it was a separate word from "Azibo", until i tried to draw a picture of one and spell the word below it.

I found the term "mad scientist" confusing, as I didn't know that "mad" could also mean crazy, so I was left wondering what all these scientists were so pissed off about.

when I was very little and I did something I thought was particularly clever my brother used to say very quickly; 'What do you want a medal or a chest to put it on' I thought he was saying 'chester pudding' and eventually asked my mother what one of these was.

When I was little I thought there was a bodily fluid that gave people the ability to talk. No one told me this; I came up with it on my own. I thought that every time a person talked, some of the fluid would be used up, and once it ran out, they would never be able to talk again.

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 was learning geometry in school and I always liked to tell my parents all about what I'd learned. They were highly amused the day I came home and told them I'd learned how to find the circumcision of a circle.

After hearing a comedy/parody show where the superheroes referred to their nemeses as "evil fie-ends" I honestly believed for YEARS that the word "fiend" was pronounced "Fie-end". It was highly embarassing when at age 12 my friend pointed out that I'd been mispronouncing it.

I used to believe that the "long run" was an actual race. When I was 7 I spent the whole summer running back and forth in the yard because I thought the long run was part of the gym curriculum in the coming school year.

Until I was about eleven, I thought that "the devil incarnate" was "the devil in garnet". So, until I learned the truth, I always pictured the devil wearing a red dress.

I use to believe that silver was gold and vice versa. When my mother told me she was getting a silver car and it would be there when I came home from school, I spent all day in a state of nervous anticipation. I thought I would be coming home to a fantastical car made out of pure gold, glinting and gleaming in the summer sun. When my ride home pulled up and I saw a dull grey car sitting on the driveway my heart sank to my feet. After that I always took the things my mother promised with a pinch of salt (or was it pepper?).

For years I convinced myself that I had invented the word "stereotypical" and was really pleased at how much it had caught on. A little part of me still believes this. I haven't had proof it was around before 1975...

i used to think that the word "candid" meant "candied", so when i heard of candid photos, i thought that it meant photographs that were somehow coated with candy. I still imagine a screen full of little candies when i think of the tv show "candid camera"

When I was rather young, my friend and I thought we could speak with British accents as if it was a whole different language, and we wrote it differently. All as were to be substituted for os, so bath became both (pronounce bawth). The opposite was also true; all os became as. So "Let's go" would become "Let's ga (gay)."

We used to speak in this manner around our parents, thinking they couldn't understand a word that we said. And of course, we had cracked a code; everyone wrote their words with these alternate spellings in England.

I used to believe that "shame" is a kind of table because when children were send to stand in the corner (near that particular table) everybody had to say "shame".

I used to believe that, in a deep and profound kind of way, the words "door knob" rhymed with "said so".