foreign languages

I am from Scotland and I was told that my country was Scotland so when I was reading about the English and that the English speak English I though English was a foreign lanuage I couldn't understand and I even imagined it sounding wierd! I wouldn't accept that I actually spoke English, how could I; I'm Scottish am I not?

opinionata

When I was little I thought that when forgien people spoke to eachother in thier language, they would hear it in english, and if they heard someone talking in enlgish, it would sound like Chinese.

Anon

I remember one time my friend said "What's the tille?" and I asked him what it meant, and he said that 'tille' meant 'time' and I assumed it was just a more grown up word. He used to say it all the time.

I never heard anyone else ever say it so one time I asked him where he got the word from. He said, "it's French .... Quel est le tille? .... it means 'what is the time?' "

I was 11 and had started French by then. He felt a bit stupid when I told him it was "Quelle heure est-il ?" (What hour is it ?)

Mux

I used to beleive that you could change words from English to French just by changing the same letters every time, like it was a simple formula. (e.g. every 'a' in English would be 'h' in French or something).

Al's view of the world

I thought only English had strange grammar structure and all other languages has the same grammar, only English was different.

Anon

When I was little I used to believe that people laughed in different languages...

Jessica Louise

I used to think that in a sentence in French, no word or beginning of a word can be capitalized. So if i would say, I like Bob. in french, i thought it would be j'aime bob. instead of J'aime Bob. Turns out it was only for dates that capitalising months and days was not allowed.

sarah

I used to think that people who spoke other languages had transaltors in their brains that made them hear in english. I was always so amazed when people could speak more than one language.

melissa

when i was small i used to think that french was just a distorted form of english and was convinced that i could speak it!!

frenchi

I used to believe that people from England spoke an ancient language that wasn't English, kind of like how the Irish used to speak Galic, and that the English language was a relatively new language.

Kate3115

When my older sister was learning French at secondary school, she would practice numbers and verbs etc. Somehow I got it into my head that it went un, deux, trois etc up to 13, when I thought it went quatorze, cans, tins, and then I couldnt remember any more numbers! I was repeatedly told by my family this was incorrect, but it wasn't until I got to school was taught the numbers that I had to work really hard to forget cans and tins and continue on to vingt and beyond!

Gemz

When at school (in wales) we were taught umah was "here" (not sure if thats the correct spelling). So when we moved to england "umah" was a slang for oh dear or you've done somthing wrong.

Ummaahhh. "Yes i know your here."

lol haven't been told otherwise yet. ;)

Jonat

When I was 7 or 8 I had neighbors that were black and they spoke Spanish so for years I thought all black people could speak Spanish!

Not so smart

i used to believe that people who spoke different languages (like spanish) had different numbers..i believed this till i was 13!

Anon

i used to belive that English wasa THE frist langudge, and every other country coppied off of us, and that we were the origanal and only ours counted, and no other one was real. they just jibber jabbered...

Olivia

I used to believe that if you knew a single word of any language, you were automatically descended from it. So I say, "I'm part English, Arabic, Spanish, Portugese," and the list goes on. That was until Mom correct

Dazed and Confused

Although I must have known from television and general life that Americans spoke English, I managed to convince myself, and my friends too, that they spoke an entirely different language. My father used to go on frequent business trips to America, and when he came back, I would tell my friends that he had taught me something new about the American language. I even claimed to have been taught several songs in 'American' which I performed for them - they were complete gibberish, of course.

Given the amount of American TV shows we get in the UK I don't know why I thought this would be convincing, nor why the other children believed. It never fails to surprise me, either, that I half believed these fantastic tales myself.

Anon

When I was little, I thought that everyone was born knowing english, but had to learn the langauge in which they lived to 'fit in' and 'be normal'

Ann-onymous

Since I couldn't make any sense of what babies were "saying" when they were babling, I was convinced when I was a child that American babies must speak Chinese. Likewise I concluded that Chinese babies must speak English.

Jared