foreign languages

i thought that japanese words were exactly the same as english words only they used characters to write them out instead of letters. if only it were that easy ... ^_^;;

neko

When I was about 5 years old, I used to think that I can speak English simply because I spoke French with a thick English accent (or well as it could have sound in my ears at the time) Since my mother tongue is French I was really proud to say I could also speak English...

Michou

When I was 6 or 7I thought that American was a totally different language, despite the Simpsons, and other cartoons, having American accent, yet speaking in English.

J

When I was 7 years old, my French teacher would sometimes play her guitar and sing a song with French words to us. I always thought she was just making up words and that the song was just gibberish.

My French teacher would tell me that those are real French words, but I didn't believe her. I also thought that "Madame" was not a real word and was just part of her "made-up language". She would get upset a lot.

Kid

I ws born here in the United States but my parents are from Mexico so because of this I was taught both languages. When I was little I knew both languages fluently and being a small child, I didn't know that noth everybody spoke Spanish as well. I remember saying half
a sentence in spanish and finishing it off in english. My teachers would always get on to me because they couldn't fully understand me which was a mystery to me because I thought I was speaking only one language! I still occasionally go off in Spanish without knowing it because to me speaking English and Spanish at the same time is normal.

Ericka

I don't remember thinking this because I was very young, but apparently I used to claim to my family that I spoke Japanese. I'm American and most definitely have always spoken English.

Jadrian

i used to belive that a german sheperd dog could only understand german and , chows could only understant chinese. so you could imagine my confusion when we got a mixed bread dog(german sheperd?chow). i cried and was upset for about a month thinking that my dog would never understand what i said to him.i soon got over this when i told him to sit down and he did.(then again i also thought that i had just invented a new language.

TiniWini

When I was about 3-4 years old, my dad got a job in USA (we're from Pakistan)and moved there. And after he had been there for about 7-8 months, we were going to US too. So I was really worried that when I met my dad after so long I wouldn't be able to talk to him because he would've forgotten our language by then :)

Deeba

when i was little i thought everyone spoke the same language so when i heard people speaking different lanuguages i thought they were speaking gibberish so i joined in with words like "uggabugga" and "soupada".

weird girl?

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 younger, I would listen to English people talking on TV [My first language is French] and then tried to immitate them...but I didn't know how to speak English and I noticed that they put lots of "hmmmm"s in their sentences, so I thought that if I say random stuff and pretend to speak English and put "hmmmm" anywhere I wanted, I would be able to speak English. So it would sound like "asdfkjanskjnfaen hmmmm....faoinweofinasdf hmmm....asldfoaind hmmm..." and on and on. I feel stupid now that I think about that.

'Hmmm'

I believed that all foreign languages were complete gibberish. Therefore, I believed that if I spoke complete gibberish I was actually speaking a foreign language. I thought these people were trying to figure out the real, English, word for things by complete guesswork.

Trevor

when i was in school i learned about the 5 romance languages, and of course i didn't pick up on why they were really called romance languages, i thought (for quite some time) that they were called that because all of those languages sounded really romantic when spoken, and of course it made sense because everybody always said that when someone spoke French, it sounded really sexy!

Kelly

I used to belive that african was the language they spoke in all of africa

quark

I was so awed at meeting a real live French person who was on an exchange visit to our school that I asked him for his autograph...ouch...

Anon

I used to believe that people who were speaking foreighn languages were just speaking gibberish.

Zoe

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

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

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 used to think that people laughed in different languages. That English was Ha-Ha...and other languages had their specified laughter, and you would have to translate it.

Karin