foreign languages

I'm Russian. When I was 5 my family moved to Germany cause my father worked at the embassy there and I had to learn to speak German at the kindergarden. So when we came back to Russia and went to the seaside in the South on holiday I assumed that whenever you travel somewhere you have to learn the language they speak there. So naturally I decided to start with the basics and asked my father what the 'southern' for 'thank you' was.

Mary

It was only at the age of 5-6 that I understood that to translate a verse into a foreign language you have to reconstruct it completely and it's impossible to translate word for word

Mary

I used to believe that if I spelled Norwegian words backwards, it would be English. I don't anymore...

Gudrun

I thought that kids who lived in other countries thought in English like we did and had to learn to speak their other language fluently by the time they were five or they'd be sent out of the country. I used to think how amazingly smart they must be to be translating their thoughts from English into a different language every time they said something.

Lyssa

Not mine but my friend thought for a long time that if you're not speaking English your speaking Spainish/ Mexican (the Spainish from Spain is diff. from the Spain is Mexico).

Anon

i was about 8 when i was at a party with family friends. While listening to my dad talking to other adults i overheard him talking about eating a "carnero" (we were all spanish-speaking).
I thought hard about this unknown animal and came to my conclusion.
"Dad? what kind of bird is a carnero?" i asked.
He burst out laughing and explained that a carnero was a lamb
whoops!

Abigail

When my Dad was young he thought that when you studied English at school, it was just the name for your own language. So when French people studied French, they called it English.

Anon

I used to believe that everyone thought in English, regardless of what language they spoke.

Samantha

When I was maybe eight or so, I found a piece of paper that had instructions for something in English, and the below that in Japanese. I decided that each one of those Japanese symbols must be the equivilent of an English letter, and I was always mystified as to why the Japanese words had so few "letters", even if the English word for it had ten letters.

Anon

I used to think Japanese people had funny ears, and that when we said something in Japanese they heard it in English...I also thought their mouths were deformed or something, so that when they spoke Japanese they were actually trying to speak English.

Anon

My mum is from Austria and she never taught me German, I'm embarrassed to say that I thought Austrian was a language and told me teacher that it's a very different language to German, I was about 10, how stupid

Anna

I used to think that when everyone was born they spoke english and had to be taught the other language by their parents.

Anon

I legitmately thought that my mom wouldnt be able to read my diary if I wrote it pig latin!

Ashley

When I was little, I just couldn't get my mind around the concept of people from other countries speaking anything other than English. Yet I knew it had to be true because I personally knew people who spoke Czech, Italian & German. My solution to this dilema? I was firmly convinced people spoke other laguages, but thought in English!

Diane

When I learned there were foreign languages and seven continents, I thought each continent had one language. Then I thought that I could form my own language, but I'd have to find new land first.

Jessica Aspra

When I first got elected to student government in my first year of university (so, I wasn't a kid then, I was NINETEEN years old, lol), whenever we talked about moving "in and out of camera," I kept looking around to see if I could find an actual camera hidden in the ceiling or something. One day, I asked this one really nice older guy where the camera was, and, fighting back the urge to laugh at me, he explained to me that it was just a Latin term to distinguish private, closed-door discussions from matters where we didn't have to worry about confidentiality so much.

Emily (still looking for that camera!!! ;) )