foreign languages

I used to believe that words that rhymed in English would rhyme in every other language as well. How else could a song be translated and still sound like a song, right?

Anon

When I was in fourth grade, I became fascinated with the life of Helen Keller. I read every book I could find. I taught myself the alphabet and numbers in sign language. In 5th grade, our chorus director taught us a song in sign to sing and perform. It must have been around that time I realized some people do actually communicate this way. I believed that if I continued to learn more sign language, that I would have children who were deaf and would be able to hear me when I spoke to them. I stopped learning more about the language at that point.

Anon

When i was little, i used to wonder why people who spoke foreign languages had such weird accents.

i was like why dont they just speak with a "normal" accent, which was american for me. i wanted to see if i could make out some of the letters they were saying. i then found out that each language had its own accent and english style sounded not normal to a spanish speaker.

chris

I once asked a classmate whose mother is Irish, "So, do you know how to speak Irish?".
She gave me a funny look & said, "They speak English".
Cripes! I had mixed up the Welsh & Irish!
That moment has always been one I wish had never happened.

N.A.

I used to believe that everyone thought in English, so people in stores and such that could speak Spanish must be SUPER smart.

Y

As a young child I attended a Mexican run religious pre-school. The nuns there tried to teach us our colors by song, for years I sang it with their accent, "Red, orange, jell-o, green blue purple..." My mom still laughs at that one!

Fran

When my husband applied for his first job when he was around 15 or so...
The application asked if he spoke a foreign language he put Enlgish. He got the job, I'm assuming because he made the interviewer laugh so hard when he read over the app. I asked him why he would put that. He said well I of course speak Amerian because I live in America & I took English in high-school so at the time it made sense. He also trys to play it off that he was nervous as it was his first job interview. Now when he mumbles something & I can't understand him...I'll ask him to let me know if he's speaking American or English so I can translate it as I am not bilingual.LOL!

S.L.H.

When I was 7 our family decided to move to Dubai for afew years. I thought that I'd completely stop speaking English and I'd start speaking Arabic and Arabic would take over English and I mae my friends swear to teach me English again when I got back

Bianca

When we used to go to Germany my dad told me about 'oerworms' (earworms) which means wen u get a song stuck in your head. until i was 14 i used to think earworm was a real english word. now i think bout it i must have confused a lot of people.

Jamie

I used to think that English was the only spoken language.One day in preschool my teacher invited a mom who who whould teach us French, when my teacher told me that I said,"I already know how to make french fries!"

Emmathel

As a child, I was always confused seeing anywhere "SOS" (Save Our Souls) sign, because in my language "sos" means "sauce" - I remember I often asked my mom, why the hell the sauces are so popular on the ships since they mention so often about it!

Zgadnij gdzie mieszkam

One of my brothers thought that everybody thought in English and that people who spoke different languages had to translate the words in thier heads and spoke in a different language because it sounded "cool."

seth thomas

I used to believe that everybody thought in English but it just came out differant.

Emily