foreign languages

I used to believe you would speak in the country you were in. For example, I'm American, and spoke only english. But if I were to ever go to Russia, I would magically be able to speak russian! How I wish it were that easy.

Ang

I thought people who didn't speak English were just being difficult. I thought since words in other languages could be translated to english that people who spoke other languages could speak and understand english but just chose not to.

Kay

I always thought that since babies could not talk proper English, they talked Japanese and babies from Japan talked English.

Person

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

When I was younger I used to think that cities, towns, states, provinces, territories, etc. were all just different words for countries. Also, if you lived in a different country, you spoke a different language. No one knew any other languages but their own, and that's just how it was. While we were driving to visit my aunt and uncle in a nearby town I asked my dad why Aunyie Mary and Uncle Dennis didn't speak another language, them being from a different country and all. He just kind of looked at me strangely and told me that they were still in the same country as us, just in a different town. I just kind of ignored what he told me because, of course they're in a different country, and they speak a different language. I thought that since they spoke english, they were doing it illegally, so that's why I never told anyone about it again, trying to protexct them from being arrested.

--A

i used to believe that cursive writing was a secret language that only grown-ups could understand.

nicole

When i was a kid,I used to think that everyone thought in english.And just spoke different languages.I proved this to myself by trying to think in french.

Fozia

As a kid, I'd only ever heard the word "Gesundheit" used in cartoons, so I thought it was a meaningless funny-sounding word that was only ever used in cartoons. Well, one time when I was visiting my neighbor (who was German), I heard her say "Gesundheit" after I sneezed. From then on, I thought she must have liked watching cartoons a lot.

Ann

I used to think that even people who spoke something other than English, thought in English

Peaches

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

Filipino people here often mix English with their Tagalog. So I came to the conclusion that Filipino people only created half a language and got lazy, so they took English to fill the rest.

Taglish

I took Spanish in elementary and I got the idea in my head that Spanish people laughed in Spanish.

Woah, too many 'Spanish's.

Maddy

i used to believe that you could learn foreign languages by subsituting foreign letters with english letters. For example bonjour = good day, so ... b=g, o=o, j=d ...

Anon

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

Jessica Louise

When I was around 7 I thought that you were born speaking a certain language. So when my baby sister was born I used to sit next to her waiting for her to talk. When my mom asked me what I was doing I said that I wanted to know if she was going to talk english or spanish! My mom still makes fun of me for that and i'm 15 now!

Lupita

When I was in Kindergarten I came home and told my mom that there was a French girl in my class. Come to find out she was actually Vietnamese... although my Grandmother likes to say that I was just exceptionally bright seeing as the French once occupied Vietnam.

Alicia

Since my grandmother spoke only Spanish and I spoke only English I used to believe different languages were generational and English was created by my cohorts

Chris Ayala

When I was young, I used to love Sesame Street and the small bits of Spanish they taught you. So when I was about five I knew that 'hola' meant 'hello'. So one day I asked my mom if there were any more ways to say hello. So she explained to me that almost every country had it's own language and own way to say hello. She then gave me examples of other languages...in Germany they speak German, in Japan tey speak Japanese, and so on. I listened intently, and replied: "Oh. We just speak regular here, right?"
Typical American kid :-)

Jacki

I used to think that every language used a different alphabet. Once I was in Frankfurt on stopover. All the airport signs had the german on the top and the english on the bottom. So i thought the german words were just english adjectives, despite the fact that the two languages were distinguisehed by different colors. Plus it did not help much that i did not see any signs that read a german word with umlauts over certain vowels or that letter which looks like a beta. Anyway I came across a sign for baths, and the german for bath is "Bad" (also in plural form). And since the german was over the english, I thought it was a place where you take not-so-good baths. Soon I joked, "you take bad baths in germany and good baths in america." I ended up taking german in college to fulfill the language distrbution requirement. I shared that story with my classmates and my instructors.

ich bin ein dumkopf

when I was just a little girl, we had the classic video of "the Wizard of Oz", but it had no suntitles (and english is not my first language). So I saw the video with my dad to explain to me, and at the end, when when the lion sings his kings' song, I asked him what the song is about. He told me he don't know, 'coz the song is in lions' language (and I stopped asking).

Dar-U-la