foreign languages

When I first took spanish, I thought "Yo tengo una pregunta" meant "tanto with a pregnant woman"

Lisa

I used to be afraid to learn Spanish fluently because my native language is English. And I thought that if I learned enough Spanish I would eventually forget English.

:-P

I used to believe went I was a kid that everyone spoke all the same language.but when I grew up I understood that each country has Its own language.

Angel velastegui

When i was a little girl , my mother asked me if i wanted to go on holday to france. i was very excited because i thought i knew the language because we had french place mats at the table. However i was hugely mistaken when i got to france and ordered an ice cream my mother said "well say thank you dear" not knowing what to say i replied "thankqwaa" . My mother was morified..the french man laughed lol.

Sickling

I was obsessed with people that spoke another language when I was a kid. I would drag my mother toward them (much to her embarassment) telling her "Mommy, look! Those are language people!" I wanted to talk to them, to find out what they were speaking, where they were from, what their culture was like. This was when I was three or four. Is it a small wonder that I'm now a translator?

Leopard Lady

In the city where I grew up (In the Unites States) there is a golf course named Bonnie Brae Golf Course. I eventually learned that "Bonnie Brae" is Scottish, meaning "lovely hillside", and that it is a common name for golf courses, reflecting the fact that golf originated in Scotland. But before learning that, I went through quite some time thinking that Bonnie Brae must be some prominent local person, and that the golf course was named for her.

Dave

My parents always read the bible in english (the Authorised Version). I knew that jewish people spoke another language when they read their bible, but I used to wonder why they didn't talk like Moses, King David, or Jesus when they read.

I tried asking my dad and mum about it, but I misunderstood, and for all the years that I couldn't read, I thought my parents were reading in hebrew and greek with their eyes, but saying it in english!

Andreas Harris

I used to believe that English was the only real language and that foreign people only spoke jibbrish so that Americans couldn't understand because they didn't trust us. I also believed that animals knew english, but didn't speak around humans for the same reason. It never occurred to me that if they spoke random words, they couldn't understand each other.

I am wierd :)

I didn't exactly believe it but I suspected that my language (German) was an invention by my parents and that everyone I ever met were paid by them for talking this artificial language.

I'm still not entirely sure.

slayniac

I used to think that the word "Germanic" had something to do with being sick

Anon

I used to think that when you got a foreign language option for something, like if a list of instructions were written in English, French, Polish, and German, for instance, then the foreign ones besides English were just there randomly, rather than being languages that people would be speaking if they were using the product!

Anon

my sister and i used to make up our own "foreign" language while we would be out shopping. we wanted people to think that we were not born in the states!

Anon

I used to believe that someone speaking a different language would translate it into English in their head, then think of what they were going to say (In English)then say it in their language. Ah, the mind of the child.

Anon

Until the age of 7, I was convinced that everyone, despite speaking different languages, actually thought and wrote in English. When I saw a Latin inscription on one of the old Roman movies I was horrified to see that people wrote in other tongues as well. Nevermind, that must be because that was in the old days. I thus got a shock when I started French class...

Sam

I believed "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" meant "Do you speak Dutch?" I also believed that because "Gesundheit!" means "God bless you!" that the German word for God must be "Gesund".

Anon

Well, my grandmother on my mother's side sometimes used Japanese words, since she knew Japanese before any other language. She used to talk to my mom and she'd say something along the lines of "That (thing here) is so kawaii" Kawaii in Japanese is "cute". I didn't understand that until later, but I did understand that "Kawai" was the brand name of the same grandmother's piano. I started crying when she said that I was kawaii, because I thought she would make me into a piano. I was about five.

Shizuka

We had a dairy queen right next to a SunCoast (I think that's right, yellow jagged sign) Gas Station, so the signs were together on the same pole. I use to think that they meant the same thing since they were on the same pole (like SunCoast meant Dairy Queen in Spanish).. so whenever I saw a SunCoast gas station I would scream for my mom to stop and get ice cream.. I didn't figure out the different until I was 11 and we took a trip to Mexico and saw a dairy queen..

Kay

I remember when I was about 6 or 7, my older sister was in the process of committing the United States' capitals to memory for school. She asked my dad if he would help her, and so I watched and listened as they listed off what sounded like far and distant lands. I believe it was when they came to Raleigh, the capital of... one of the Carolinas?... when I asked, "Dad, what language do they speak in Raleigh?"

Lydia

when I was little, I thought that all the states were different Islands or countries. I thought that countries had differnt languages. One day, I heard about New Jersey, For a while i was thinkins what language people spoke in New Jersey

jimmy joe

When I was in elementary school, I would spend my summers in Korea with my grandmother. However, my Korean wasn't that great so I often confused the word "shijang" (the market)with "shijip" (married). Needless to say, I got some odd responses when I told callers that my grandmother couldn't answer the phone because she went to get married.

Wonbanana