spelling

One time while I was at recess in preschool, I went through the whole alphabet in my head, trying to figure out which letter made the ŋ (ng) sound.

Anon

When I started reading comics, I used to think people were yelling "APPLES" when they were happy to see a performance. Later on I learned the word "applause".

CAT

When I was in elementary school, I had this strange affection for the letter "T", connected to a hatred for "S". "S" always comes before "T" in the alphabet and is a mean bully. "T" just sits next to "S" minding it's own business, but "S" shoves "T" around all the time. Stupid "S".

lillie

I thought the alphabet had only 24 letters until I was 11. I heard everywhere that it had 26, but I thought they were all errors.

Anon

At my elementary school we routinely sang "O Columbia, the gem of the ocean." I heard this as "Columbia, the jam of the ocean." I understood this to mean that America had got in Columbus' way when he tried to get to India. Sort of like a traffic jam.

BB

I used to believe that if I had spelled a word incorrectly that it wasn't me who was wrong but that someone had changed the spelling for that word. A particular one that sticks in my mind is an argument I had with my mum about how "from" used to be spelt "form" and how could I possibly be expected to get it right if they keep changing it.

Ben.

Although I don't remember this, my mother swears that when she was teaching me the alphabet, she could not get me to say W, X, Y and Z...

I would say double-me, X, Y and Z.

She loves to bring this up at family gatherings just to anoy me.

"Double-Me"

In the first grade , i would have spelling tests 3 times a week ...i used to study a lot for these tests ...and my mom would always say write them around your head ( as in spell them out in your head) ... i thought that she meant write the words on your skull ...so every day after studying i would get a pencil and lightly write everything that i had studied on my head! i thought it helped!

Naz

When i was at school I just couldn't figure out why the letter "X" was mostly absent from words and if he did appear he was always at the end like in fox. I figured he was always late but so wanted to be first and cried when "F" and "O" beat him too it AGAIN. As a grown up I know that "X" has had more success than that since he often makes second place but so frustrated with never being first he has often struck off on his own and set up his own scheme of complementing words like ray, files and factor oh he is big and fireworky on the X factor but my generation (generation X) have tried but failed to put him in his proper place. Oh you are such a maverick; letter X!

oppinionata

I used to think that the alphabet was one big word and that it was pronounced as one huge word. I thought that it was one of the most famous words and that someone wrote a song about it because it was so great

Summer

When I was little and just learning to write, I thought that you could put as many lines as you wanted on a capital E. Therefore, I used to make E's with 10 or more lines coming off of them. My mom still has some of my early E's.

Anon

For the most part, I was always a good speller, but I refused to believe that "etalics" was spelled with an I instead of an E. I got in an argument with my mom about that.

Aretia (This is written in Etalics, isn't it?)

at grade 3, I was assigned to write about War, for Remembrance Day. I wrote a confusing story about the bad things done by "The Whore"; confusing because the bad things would apply to both Wars & dirty Whores, & the teacher was curious where I learned all this at 7 years old.
I just figured that a Big, Important concept like War should use Big, Important spelling -- W's spelled with a silent h & the "OR" continuing into a trailing e

Les Wenninger

When I first heard the alphabet, I thought it went a b c d e f g h i j k elameno p, q r s etc. I thought elameno was one long letter. I imagined it would look kind of like an 8 on its side... Don't ask

Annonymous

When I was first taught the alphabet I thought that each letter had a spelling as in bee(b) and ef(f). I got rather upset when the teacher couldn't tell me how to spell o.

I also thought when taught about apostrophes, as in it's rather than it is, that this was some fantastic new discovery and people across the land would only now be learning of it.

Rob Fitzpatrick

When I was very little, I used to believe that letters were words. I would constantly ask "How do you spell B??" And would get very frustrated whenever anyone told me that you spelled it "B".

Katie

I used to believe that all languages were identical - just that the letters were in a different order. So, the word for 'tree' would always be four letters and all you had to do was learn the codes.

Harry

When I first learned the alphabet song, I didn't realize "l, m, n, o, p" were letters, I thought it was "elemenopee" - a decoration in the middle of the song.

Anon

i really thought that "key" was a secret letter to the alphabet that only i knew.

amber

In Kindergarden my Mom home schooled me and I thought the "E" made the same sound as the "I" so when my Mom was helping me write numbers, I would write six as sex and she would get mad at me!!

Dessy