speaking

I used to believe that each person had a certain amount of 'voice'. I thought that when people had lost their voice it had just run out, so I used to stay quiet for long periods of time to save it up.

Mee

When I was around 7, someone gave our family a box of these caramel-on-a-stick candies called 'brown cows' and my step-brother at the time used to say 'have a cow/ don't have a cow' referring to the candy. I'm 25 now so the Simpsons wasn't on at the time but the first time i heard the phrase 'don't have a cow' i was convinced that someone on the street heard our family saying it and immediately dialed hollywood up and relayed this wicked-cool phrase that they'd heard a child say on the street.

i thought we invented 'don't have a cow'

sarah kie

As a kid, I always read a lot, and read a lot of my parents' books. So there were a lot of words that I'd read (and understood) but didn't know how to pronounce.

In high school, I was preparing a Shakespearean monologue for speech class that included the word "whore". Luckily, I practiced at home first, where my mom told me that "war" was not the right way to say it. :)

Anon

I used to believe linemen ( said linnymen) was a road treatment that would cause damage to your car if you drove over it. It appears I was mistaken, and linemen are people...
Although, they will still cause damage to your car if you run over them, so I had it half right!

discocat

As slow as a wet week.....
For most of my childhood I believed that a week was a small long haired animal which had trouble in the rain.

discocat

A 7 year old girl that I know wanted to know why people invented words that you weren't allowed to say. (i.e. the f word)

Anon

My younger sister always had a hard time saying "cucumbers" -- she'd pronounce it cumcubers which, to anyone past puberty, sounds pretty obscene.

My cousins used to say "hamboogers" too which never sounded like something I wanted to eat.

Lyle

I used to think "This morning" was pronounced "Thissmoring" as one word This and smorning.

Aerith

My Mom always used the phrase "For all intensive purposes" when I was growing up, and (of course) I picked it up too. When I was around 25 years old or so, I learned the correct phrase is "For all intents and purposes". I thought, wow, Mom's been saying it wrong all these years, but I never said anything to her about it. About 5 years later, she was watching Wheel of Fortune, and the puzzle solution was "For all intents and purposes". She said,"Heh! Well I'll be damned! I've been saying it wrong for all these years! " She was around 60 at the time.

Joe

Having been taught phonics in grade school, I believed I could sound out virtually any word. The Plymouth dealership sign across from my uncle's home made me think they must use plywood to make the front end.

Dr. Winkler

When I was little I used to think that the line "rubber baby buggy bumpers" meant that the baby was rubber.

laf

I believed that babies spoke their own language, that only mothers could understand (the product of watching mothers trying to guess at what their children wanted when they cried, I guess). Once, when a family friend was at our house with her baby, who was babbling away, I asked my mom to translate for me. I guess she was too busy to talk with me, so she just kept saying "I don't know what he's saying." It was a while before someone explained to me that babies don't actually talk yet.

Char

I was a very quiet child. That's because I believed I would wear out my vocal cords whenever I talked and I had to save them for when I was older.

Bel Seslaf, Brazil

I thought the word economical was actually two words: eek and omical.

Nancy M.