spelling

At my primary school we had to take it in turns to read part of a story out of a book, and then we'd go through some of the longer words and say what they meant. During my turn, I came across the word "cupboard". I didn't know that cupboard was spelt like that, so I pronounced it as "cup board". The teacher asked me if I knew what it meant, and I said it was a board that you hung cups on, and that we had one at home. Oh, the shame.

lu

When I was little and had just started school, I believed I could spell any word by just sounding out the first few letters and then saying the rest of the word as normal. I'd march around the house proudly yelling, "Listen, Daddy, I can spell table! T-A . . .bull!" I can't remember how long this went on before I learned real spelling, but until then I was convinced that I was really smart and that my way was just as good as using all the letters.

Mandi

My name startes with an "E" and when I was learning to write my name, I thought that after you 'made' the vertical line, and the line on top of it and the line on the bottom, instead of just putting in one more line across the middle of my capital "E'"s I thought you were supposed to squeeze as many lines in between the top and bottom as possible...I eventually went into kindergarten and one of the first things my teacher asked me was "Erica, why does your "E" look like a comb?!"
...I was so embarrassed that I had been doing it wrong for so long...(and here I thought all along that I could do it better than anyone else...after all, they could only fit ONE line between the tops and bottoms of thier "E'"s!!)

Erica

Before I could read, I would play with my mother's typewriter. I understood the concept that letters formed words but thought that ANY combination of letters would spell out a word. I would type a jumble of letters, take the paper out of the typewriter, and handing it to my parents, ask them what it said. Of course, I always spelt out something very profound.

Emily C.

I used to believe that the capital letter "E" could have as many lines as you could fit in it, not just the three.

Stephanie

When I was between 3 and 4 and learing to write the letters of the alphabet and my name, I thought the letter E could be drawn with an infinite amount of horizontal lines.

Andrea

As a kid I believed that the word "artificial" was actually "art official", as if artificial things were products of some kind of "official" art.

Carolyn Morgenstern

When I was young, I thought that in the alphabet in between the letters "Y" and "Z", that there was another "N", so I figured it was the Spanish "N" with the tilde over it.

Suzanne

I use to believe that a "Prima Donna" was "Pre-Madonna"---someone before Madonna's time.

Lacey S

When I was younger, I used to believe that 'n' came twice in the alphabet (L, M, N, AND Y, N, Z)


It took me a while to realize that it was 'and' and not 'N'

MoonlitLupine

when I was around 3 years old I was convinced that the alphabet went like this;
A,C,D,C, F and G. ache 'n jakey (or at least I sounded like that) L,and don't forget the P, Q or S, tee-e-vee, double-your X, then the Zex.

no matter what anyone told me It was always like this. My mother evan tryed puting a tape of someone singing the alphabet in my room when I went to sleep. I would I always sing along to it, (in my own way of corse!)

I swear this is completly true and my parents have it on tape. Strangly enough I knew the french alphabet perfectly (I am Canadian) but I didn't knew the proper english one until I was about 6.

Today I teach english to middle school children and this is always a good story to tell the children. :)

Brittany

When I was small, my friend Melissa wrote her name in all capital letters, letting the center line of the A extend past the sides, making it look somewhat like a star missing the bottom two lines. She told me that only certain people could write their names like this, as it affected pronunciation, and I was devastated. For months I came home crying from daycare because I couldn't cross my A's like she had, and afterward, insisted being called 'Diamond' so that I could write my name with the amazing A's.

Kara

I thought "undertow" was spelled "undertoe," because it's under your toes...
I learned the truth at a spelling bee. Good thing it was the guy next to me who got that word, and not me!

Aretia

I used to baby-sit a little girl. She loved to watch Sesame Street and particularly loved the character Elmo. So, when she was three and learned her alphabet, she always said H-I-J-K-Elmo-P. It was always so adorable and we would ask her to say her alphabet over and over just to hear it. Last time I saw her, when she was 6, she was still saying it that way

Big-Sarah

When i was first learning my alphabet, i thought that "l, m, n, o, p" was "elemental p". i always wondered what "elemental" meant and why it was used to describe the letter p.

gabrielle

My letter E always had far too many lines in it. I used to think that the E was actually a ladder, and I needed more "rungs" to help people climb it.

MrEricSir

I used to think "D" was an optional letter of the alphabet, because once my kindergarten techer once skipped it while singing the alphabet.

Anon

my mom used to say you spell Mississippi M-I-crooked letter-crooked letter i-crooked letter-crooked letter-i-hump back-hump back-i so when i wrote it in school it was really long and my teacher would tell me and i told her to shut up because my mommy was smarter than her so she called my mom to pick me up for yelling at her and stuff and i said mommy my teacher doesn't know how to spell Mississippi and she finally told me "crooked letter" meant s and "humpback" was p yep i was looking pretty stupid

Anon

I used to think that honey was spelled Hunny like the way Winnie the Pooh spelled it. Unfortunately I lost the spelling bee because of it.

Really Pooh?

when I was a child I had never seen Jennifer Lopez written down so I thought her name was Jenny Ferlopez x)

Cath