speaking

My family went on vacation to Hawaii and we went to Pearl Harbor to do the tourist thing. They were refinishing an exhibit out doors and there was a sign that said "PLEASE WATCH FOR FLYING DEBRIS." My brother says, "what's flying DEB-ris (pronounced as it looks) and my dad says, "they are part of the Flying Wallindas." Dorks :)

never mind

I used to confuse "snack" and "smack." That was never too good at daycare.

katie

When I was a child, I heard the term Blackmail. So I ask my mother. She told me it was a letter that was in a black envelope. Ok, not going to argue. It came back to haunt me when my child asked me the same thing, and of course, I gave him the same answer my mother gave me.

MrsBull

i didn't know the difference between the words "deaf" and "death", so i used them interchangably.

Harold

When I was very young, we were leaving my Grandmother's house, and she said to me, "I'll have to come visit you at your house one day."

I had never heard the words "one day" used in this manner. As far as I was concerned, the only usage of that term was at the beginning of a story (i.e "One day Johnny was walking down the street..."). To me, "one day" always meant something in the past, and I thought she was crazy to use it to talk about something in the future.

Joe Martinez

When I was about four I thought adults spoke a diferent language.

Amy

Currently, in my 9th grade class, we are studying genes and the like in biology. Well, we briefly touched on it in 8th grade, and I remember reading the word alleles, but never hearing it said out loud. About last week, I heard my teacher say it, but to my surprise she said it 'al-LEELS'. I had assumed it was pronounced "a-LAY-lees". It gets worse, I tried to correct her.

Katie♥Überdork

I always believed movable bungalows were called "dungalows" and always believed it was right.

I visited a park when I was younger called "duinrell" in Holland and it's not until a couple days ago when I visited the website that I realised "duingalow" is just a gimmick..

I am 21.

Nina

I used to believe (thanks to my brother...) that whenever anybody said 'They', they were talking about my other brother's class. "They're going to build a huge bridge across the river." "Who's they?" "Greg's class!"

Sally

When I was little, my brother would always say to me "You're sttttt....upendous!!" I would get so upset because I thought stupendous meant stupid, so I would always tell on him, and my mum would just go "So?"

Sally

I didn't know that "people" was plural for "person," and I actually thought it meant grown-ups. (Possibly because we would always be in big groups of people who are mostly adults)

Anon

One time when I was in my backyard, I was playing with this baby toy, which probably belonged to my sister, but I'm not really sure. It was one of those toys that vibrate when a cord is pulled. I decided to have a little fun with that toy by biting the handle at the end of the cord with my teeth and letting go with my hands. It made my head vibrate, and my vision "vibrated" along with it. I went and told my dad, who was in the backyard as well. I told him that when I let go of the toy while biting the handle, it made my eyesight "blorry." He didn't know what I meant, and I was also confused because my dad was the first person I heard that word from (the correct word, of course, but I misheard). After some frustrating discussion, my dad finally figured it out, and he explained to me that the word I intended to say was not "blorry," but rather "blurry."

Anon

I thought "incessantly" meant "often and annoyingly".

Anon

When I was 15, I accidentally referred to my baby cousin's Christening as his funeral. Well, at least I found it funny myself.

Anon

I don't recall believing anything that I've since outgrown. However, I couldn't believe that pronunciations could differ. It was a great concern of mine when I was nine and we were to move from Tennessee to Illinois. I remember repeating "bean" over and over and never believing that it could be pronounced other than the way I's always heard it. Big surprise!

Claudia

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

Aerith

I used to believe the word "movie" was pronounced"wee-oovie"

M

When I was very tiny, I used to think that a portrait was just a rubbish picture of someone. Clearly I had deciphered the meaning correctly from the context, but added a bit of my own. I was outraged at the shoddyness that the people talking would accept when they said that they would like a "poor-trait", so I insisted that I would only accept a "bettertrait", oh yes indeed.

Lawrence G

for some reason, when i was little, i thought "wealthy" meant "poor".

parachute

When I was little, I had this poor habit of repeating every angry thing that I heard on TV because I thought it would make me sound cool. For example: "Mommy, what the hell is that?" "Oh, I didn't wanna come to this stupid place anyway." "Everybody SHUT UP!!!!!" "Will ya knock it off already?" Oh yeah, I heard a lot of this stuff from my dad too (not bad language really, but a lot of the above). My parents would slap me up and down for saying it, and of course never tell me why it was wrong.

Michelle