foreign languages

I used to bekeive philosiphy was a language, because my mom tought spanish and my dad taught philosiphy, and I would ask him things like "Say (so and so) in philosiphy.

Anon

i'm from mexico, so i speak spanish...

when i was a kid, I used to think that arabian was spoken like spanish, but the words were written backwards !!

mr. L

I used to believe that Latin was spoken in Latin America.

C.C.

i used to think that french was english backwards!

---pepsi---

I used to believe that when the commercial said "batteries not included" it was the commercial recited again in spanish.

britt

When I was 5 or 6, at my bedtime my German babysitter would play the acoustic guitar and sing a song with German lyrics.

I believed that she was just singing made up words since the only languages i knew were English and Spanish. I thought that one lyric "Schloff kindlein schloff"(not sure how to spell it) was "sloff killine sloff" and it just sounded like made up words.

When my mom was putting me to bed, I asked her if she could sing the "Slop killmine slop"(how i pronounced it) song and she was confused and had no idea what i was talking about! She thought i was just babbling nonsense!

Marco

When I was younger (8 or 9), I used to believe that only people who spoke English could write songs or poetry because when you translated the English words into any other language they didn't rhyme anymore.

Scott

My friend Alex went on exchange to America (from England where we live), and upon arrival in the US, he was asked by one of the students, who knew where he was from, "Do you speak English?"
Hmm.. English... England... no connection there?! Obviously not.

Jesi

When I was small I believed that there was a secret trick to turn English into any new language, as with Pig Latin. Perhaps a more complex trick with a few new sounds, but a pattern that could be easily learned. Then I began French lessons. The first week we were told about an important "irregular" verb (etre - to be), but that most were regular. So I still expected to learn the secret trick the next week. When I discovered I would have to learn every single french word, I was surprised and immensely disappointed.

Jennifer

I thought all you had to do to speak Russian was add -ski to the end of every word!

nateski

I used to wonder who Mazelle was, and why she was always mad. It wasn't until we had French class I realized it's mademoiselle.

Anon

i used to think that the language pig latin was called pig latin because it was used by pigs

kim

I used to think that people who spoke a different language really had some sort of device in their ears to translate what they were saying into english.

Timred

I used to think that saying "I can't speak Spanish" meant that you literally couldn't make the words come out of your mouth (something like how Jim Carrey couldn't lie in the movie Liar Liar.) I pictured people like grabbing their throats and trying to choke the words out.

Anon

When I was little, we had one of those potty-training books that tells the story of a little girl or boy that gets potty trained, gets their own potty, etc. The book's choice of words often confused me when I would read it because it used the word "urine" to refer to pee. I had never heard the word before, but I could tell that it referred to pee somehow. When my little sister asked me to read the book to her, she stopped me and asked what "urine" meant. I confidently told her that it was the Spanish word for pee. What a dope.

No hablo espanol!

I used to think we spoke german at home because it was our own made-up language. In school we spoke english, the normal language, and other families had different languages that they had invented.

Anon

I'm from a country that speaks Spanish, so as a little kid I didn't understand English much. So one day during summer when a was 6 and visiting the U.S.A I was in the car with my mother, grandmother, cousin, and sisters, we made a stop to a McDonald's with a play place, so they let us play in the play place. I wanted to know how to communicate with the American kids while playing with them, so I went like "AAAAAA NO FHSJSJSJDISMNEJM" because that apparently sounded English to me. I left several of them confused.

Hanjax 70

I am russian and I moved to US not a very long time ago. But when I was little my parents tryied to teach me how to speak english and I didn't understand why they did that. I couldn't understand how someone can't speak russian because it was so easy. I thougth that people had to translate their thougth from russian to english before they spoke.

Julia

Until i was in high school I always thought that sign-language was a language that was spoken (or signed) in a country some where, and that's what all spoke (signed). I always wondered how they got the attention of people that weren't looking.

Bill Torkewitz

When I was like 4 or 5, I loved those Sesame Street movies where Big Bird visits other countries. I really liked learning Japanese words in "Big Bird in Japan", but unfortunately almost all the words they focused on sounded exactly like English words: "hai" (yes) sounds like "hi", "ohayou" (good morning) sounds like "Ohio", and "ichi, ni, san" (one, two, three), sounds like "itchy, knee, sun." Because of this, I thought for a time that Japanese, and probably other languages besides English, had all the same words as English, but the meanings were just switched around.

Amanda