how old?

[babalu1997]

All this talk about language got me thinking?

 

How were you when you realized you could read?

 

People tell me that as a child i could read really early, and i remember at 6 my mother bragging about it and a woman giving me stuff to read. The woman was really impressed when i was able to read the loan word SHOW, because the sh combination is not used in our langauage , neither is the w. But that, I knew because i had seen an ad on tv where the guy pronounced the word show.

 

I used to be amrt as a kid, but dont know what happened since-- and that is why matmat wont play with me :P

 

But i have an earlier memory of a poster hung by a teacher named Rosa, ehich would make me about 4 years old, and i remember reading it.

[gwnn]

I learned to read when I was 4 or 5 but I spelt a little funny, I wrote the R's and S's the other way around (I think this is indicative of a brain tumour or epilepsy but I'm OK). The first day of school (I was 7) I remember I read a medium length text and the teacher was very proud of me and everyone applauded me. It's been all downhill from there.

[Phil]

Distinctly remember the moment I learned to write my own name at age 3. Learned to read the next year - it came quite easy for me for some reason, but I lugged a leg brace around until I was 2 1/2 (was born without a hip socket - dysplasia I think), and the delay in walking might have contributed dunno.

[PassedOut]

When I was three and a half, I got for Christmas a blackboard that had the letters of the alphabet in a section across the top. Soon I had learned all the letters, but when I would recite the alphabet I had it backwards (to the amusement of the adults). I don't really remember the process of learning to read.

 

My great epiphany came when I started first grade. I was in a combination first and second grade class, and I remember sitting in a big circle as the teacher wrote words on the board and asked if anyone could recognize them. It clicked with me that I could read them all, and most of the other kids could not.

 

I do remember the moment when I learned to tell time. I was looking at the clock and asking a few questions, and suddenly I understood.

[Gerben42]

I think 4, thanks to Sesamy Street. So what if I write the 8 mirrored and the 5 in one piece, people can read it, there shouldn't be an official way.

[Fluffy]

I have no clue when did I start to read really.

[Aberlour10]

5y old, my sister was 7 at that time. I liked to sit beside her and watch while she did her homework..

[jjbrr]

I was 4 and I distinctly remember also that I had a difficult time writing the lowercase "e" so I always wrote my name in capital letters for a while. Somehow my brain thought it was some curly squiggle, and I never made the connection that it was just a "c" with an extra line in it.

[jdonn]

I could read when I was 4, but my mother swears I could multiply before that when I was 3. That's right, if I wasn't lazy and apathetic I could have been a prodigy.

[NickRW]

Well, I am quite sure I was 5 when I really started to read - at school - along with pretty well everyone else. And I must have been quite good at it because the classes were "streamed" and I was in the top class. However, I was much happier with numbers and really did not like reading - it was a skill I learned to please teachers but which really had nothing to do with me as I saw it.

 

I was actaully about 11 or 12 before I gained any real confidence with written language. I had to write a letter to the secretary of a club - in order to join - and I knew my spelling was attrocious - and my mother refused to write the letter for me. At that point spelling became a subject that had some relevance to me at a personal level and I went forward from there.

 

Nick

[neilkaz]

When I was 4 I could read very simple words but much more by recognition than sounding them out which didn't come for a year or so later.

 

I was much more gifted mathematically than verbally or linguistically and when I was 4 every morning on my beloved magnetic blackboard I'd accurately update the large number that I'd calculated that was the number of seconds that I'd been alive.

[kenberg]

I can sort of locate it in time.

 

Birthday Jan 1, entered kindergarten age 4, 1st grade age 5. Approaching Christmas, I read some Christmas greetings on a wall and my mother said "You can read?" So, a little before age 6, the answer was yes.

 

There is something I have always wanted to track down. I think I started reading comic books more or less immediately after I learned to read, and I have vague memories of Mickey, Pluto and the gang all being part of the war effort. I would love to see some comics circa 1944-45 to check up on my memory. I have, as I imagine others have, scattered memories of my early years. For no really good reason, some of them intrigue me.

[matmat]

I still can't read.

[mikeh]

I have almost no memories before age 5, and very few before 6 or 7...and don't think I ever did...that is, I remember never having memories, as opposed to losing them as I got older. But, my parents told me I was reading the newspaper when I was 3 years old. I don't think they meant that I was discussing matters of importance or that I understood much of what I was reading, but I could read out the words...or most of them, anyway.

 

I do know that I was reading books from the adult part of the local library when I was 8...I remember a librarian trying to persuade me to put the books back. My tastes then were pretty basic: Alistair MacLean, Neil Shute, and the like.

[Cascade]

I don't remember when I started to read.

 

I have been told (no memories here) that I started to walk apparently quite young at 9 months - my grandfather used to say i skipped walking and started running.

 

I also remember being very proud at a much later age at tying my shoelaces and announcing this to my teacher but I can't remember the exact age - maybe 6 or even 7. Before that my mother had to tie them every morning for me.

 

I have memories from before my third birthday. We moved into a newly built house and I remember being there before it was finished. I fell on a small pain of glass and broke the glass and cut my knee - I had a small scar for many years but it seems to have faded. And I remember my sister being born when I was two years and 11 months - the other memories are prior to that.

 

I never read much particularly fiction but also don't recall having difficulty with reading. I have read exactly one adult fiction novel in my life. My mate and I in high school used to have private competitions in class tests writing character summaries and the like for characters we have never heard of.

[helene_t]

I started learning it when I was 6. When I was 7 or 8 I started collecting books about animals and tried to learn as many details as possible by heart. When I was 10 I wrote a list of the latin names of 500 animals, it had been my goal for some time to reach 500. But other than animal books I didn't read much else. Later I would spend most of my free time at the public library, reading books about geography.

 

I still almost only read popular science (for some time I read bridge books also). For a short while, when I was 19 and 20, I read cartoons, but other than that I have almost never read fiction.

[mikeh]

I don't remember when I started to read.

 

I have been told (no memories here) that I started to walk apparently quite young at 9 months - my grandfather used to say i skipped walking and started running.

 

I also remember being very proud at a much later age at tying my shoelaces and announcing this to my teacher but I can't remember the exact age - maybe 6 or even 7.  Before that my mother had to tie them every morning for me.

 

I have memories from before my third birthday.  We moved into a newly built house and I remember being there before it was finished. I fell on a small pain of glass and broke the glass and cut my knee - I had a small scar for many years but it seems to have faded.  And I remember my sister being born when I was two years and 11 months - the other memories are prior to that.

 

I never read much particularly fiction but also don't recall having difficulty with reading. I have read exactly one adult fiction novel in my life. My mate and I in high school used to have private competitions in class tests writing character summaries and the like for characters we have never heard of.

when did you learn to create balloon animals??? That's far more impressive (to a Klutz like me) than reading :D

[barmar]

My only memory from those years was that when I was in kindergarten I was shifted from a regular class to a more progressive one that taught the basics of reading; at the time, I think this was usually taught in 1st grade. They were experimenting with a program using the experimental Internation Teaching Alphabet (see http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ita.htm). This was 1966-67.

 

This was a few years before Sesame Street premiered and it became common for preschoolers to learn the alphabet.

[Cascade]

I don't remember when I started to read.

 

I have been told (no memories here) that I started to walk apparently quite young at 9 months - my grandfather used to say i skipped walking and started running.

 

I also remember being very proud at a much later age at tying my shoelaces and announcing this to my teacher but I can't remember the exact age - maybe 6 or even 7.  Before that my mother had to tie them every morning for me.

 

I have memories from before my third birthday.  We moved into a newly built house and I remember being there before it was finished. I fell on a small pain of glass and broke the glass and cut my knee - I had a small scar for many years but it seems to have faded.  And I remember my sister being born when I was two years and 11 months - the other memories are prior to that.

 

I never read much particularly fiction but also don't recall having difficulty with reading. I have read exactly one adult fiction novel in my life. My mate and I in high school used to have private competitions in class tests writing character summaries and the like for characters we have never heard of.

when did you learn to create balloon animals??? That's far more impressive (to a Klutz like me) than reading :D

30 something

 

http://www.ebridgenz.com/images/Flower.JPG

[OleBerg]

I played around and learned to ride a bike and play soccer. When I was six I started in school, and learned to read, write and do math.

 

I might have had a little grasp of numbers earlier on, so as to be able to get the maximum numbers of candy.

 

Balloon Animals are a hoax, they are physically impossible to create.

 

Anyone who feels like klutzes, should check this out:

 

www.thereifixedit.com

[paulg]

I have almost no memories before age 5, and very few before 6 or 7...and don't think I ever did...that is, I remember never having memories, as opposed to losing them as I got older. But, my parents told me I was reading the newspaper when I was 3 years old. I don't think they meant that I was discussing matters of importance or that I understood much of what I was reading, but I could read out the words...or most of them, anyway.

 

I do know that I was reading books from the adult part of the local library when I was 8...I remember a librarian trying to persuade me to put the books back. My tastes then were pretty basic: Alistair MacLean, Neil Shute, and the like.

Easier to quote than write the same again. Eerily similar :D

[barmar]

I'm visiting my mother this weekend, so I asked her when I started reading. Apparently my memory of my preschool years is faulty, too, because she says I was reading in nursery school.

 

On the other hand, I still remember the name of my nursery school: Miss Sue's.

 

Maybe kindergarten was when I learned to write using ITA.

[zasanya]

We are all geniuses till the age of five.-Oscar Wilde

[barmar]

There's an article in this month's Scientific American that seems to support Wilde's statement.

[pdmunro]

I learnt to read at about 7. Didn't go to school till I was 6: I didn't want to go to preschool when I was 5 - I much preferred going shopping with mum in our small country town store. Once I learnt to read, my parents had the pleasure of my presence early in the morning, balanced on the side of their bed and reading to them. Of course, I also learnt to read in Latin about that time: I was the altar boy and the Irish immigrant priest need someone to holler out the Latin responses.