I learned at around age 3. My sister wanted to read to somebody and I, being the youngest, got to be that person. I remember in Kindergarten I had to be the narrator for the class play because nobody else could read. I also remember having fun books in Montessori - especially the Z book, which was striped like a zebra. Fun times.
I taught myself when I was 3. Apparently, I was jealous of the rest of the family spending all their time stuck behind books, while I had to settle with TV. I clearly remember asking my mom at one point what “t-heh” meant, and her being surprised at why I was asking.
Unfortunately, I refused to read anything except comic books. My mother couldn’t get me to read a “grownup” book until I was about 6, when she presented me with a copy of The Fantastic Mr. Fox.
She recently bought me another copy to replace that first one that she gave me over 25 years ago. And it’s still a cool book!
I learned to read english in second grade (age 7) , and remember vividly how frustrating it was to look at all that alphabet soup on the page and be in the slow reading group, etc.
Don’t remember precisely about reading in french, I’d have to ask the parents when I learned. Must have been the year I was 4 since I was reading in my first year there. Probably learned in school, because I started school right after we moved there .
4 years old was standard to start school, but they did 2 years of kindergarden before before 1st grade.
I have a really poor memory for much before I was 7 or so. Come to think of it, I have a crappy memory for what I did last week. 
Jeez, I feel really stupid now. I didn’t learn until I was 6 (first grade), when the school taught me. I only attended part of kindergarten, but they definitely didn’t teach, well, anything.
I’m another one of those “can’t remember how I learned to read” ones. I honestly don’t remember ever not knowing how to read. When I was in pre-school, I was reading “The Modern Encyclopedia of Baby and Child Care”, which was written on an eighth grade level. When I was in the second and third grade, I was in the math class for the next grade up, and also in fourth grade English class in the third grade. What happened after that, I’m not sure, but by the fourth grade, I was back in the same grade-level Math and English classes as all the other kids. I think it may have had something to do with the fact that my mother married my stepfather. Being a stepchild, any signs of being brighter than the average kid my age was looked upon with scorn. Also, he had a habit of running up a lot of debt, then we would have to sell the house and move to take the profits and pay his debts. Moving across school district lines, I don’t think the parental units bothered to tell the PTB at the new schools that I was above grade level in math and English.
I was 4. I don’t remember it; I only know because my mother was always bringing it up. They had put signs all over the house labelling everything (“refrigerator,” “chair,” “dog,” “ennui”) and I think they just wanted to vindication that it’d been worth the effort.
I have no memory of learning to read. My mother kept notes from my first grade teacher which told her that during reading period I was sent to a corner with several other kids to help them with the basics. I remained in that class for about a month, then I was tested and sent off to the “Gifted” program for the rest of elementary school.
Other than being sent to a different school than all my of neighborhood friends (“Smarty School,” as they called it), it wasn’t a bad experience. I’ve always suspected, though, that the program was just as much about getting potential problems out of the “regular” schools as it was about giving us better learning opportunities.
[whine]"Mo-om, I’m suffering from … (looks down, sounds out tag pinned to shirt)…en-nui. "
“Go label the dog, dear”
About three. Apparently nobody deliberately taught me, and the family was pretty shocked when they noticed. That and the blinding speed in which I was toilet trained have been my major accomplishments up to this point in life.
If I remember correctly, I don’t think I really learned to read completely until I was about seven. Reading was always really frustrating for me until then.
My sister taught me at three or four. I remember reading “The Book of Knowledge” set of kids’ encyclopedias in Kindergarten. By fifth grade, the teacher would assign in-class homework to the others and call me up to her desk to try to stump me with spelling words. I don’t remember her ever succeeding. On standardized tests, I was always reading at least 3 grades higher and in the 90+ percentile for comprehension. Writing skills have also been very high.
I don’t actually know how to read, but I pretend to be someone who does on the internet.
My mother and grandmother taught me at age 3 using magazines. My next door neighbor couldn’t believe it and would pay me a quarter to read stuff.
KA-CHING!!
My parents say 2 years old. Late into that year, I guess.
My dad taught me to read using colourful magnetic letters. Of all the toys I had, it was probably the one I used the most and for the longest. I loved reading.
I taught myself to read at 3. I reckon watching my older brother read his Dr. Suess books did it. My parents would show me off to their guests by having me read a newspaper to them when I was 4. I used to get pissed (age 3-4) when my family would go to a restaurant and the waitperson didn’t give me a menu. I would order stuff exactly how it read on the menu, like “I’ll have Captain Arrh’s Crispy Golden Fried Jumbo Gulf Shrimp”.
[D. Boon]
I was a fucking corndog
[/D. Boon]
This is an odd thread. I’m the only person I know personally who learned to read that early, and it’s bizarre to see this many others with experiences so similar to mine.
I apparently learned to read somewhere between age two and three. Mom was finishing up her education degree, and practicing on me. We read together a lot – I remember that much – but like so many here, I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t read.
I don’t remember calling out the names of the products as we went grocery shopping, but Mom said I did a lot of that – usually things I’d seen on television.
Spent six weeks in the first grade before they bumped me to second.
I was 3 or 4. I remember my mother "What’s this word? Tee-hee. No, really, look, here it is. THAT’S “The”??? I was astonished that that was how “the” was spelled.
ASKing my mother, that is… hmmmm… hamsters eat single words in posts, cuz I swear I typed asking.
My mum had a massive falling-out with our public libraries. They wouldn’t issue cards to children under 3 years old, even if they were easily getting through their mother’s six-book allowance on each visit. Damn, I was annoying :wally
My father told me that I was reading the newspaper to him at 18 months.