In what order have you learned the different strokes?

I learned the *** stroke when I first started swimming at 5 and was never taught anything else. I don't know if that was just because I grew up in europe or the thing to do in the 70's. Anybody out there who did not learn to swim in the US? Now my kids swim and have learned all 4 and they do have their favorites, but at least they have choices and can swim the IM.

Of the 4 main strokes, is it safe to assume most people learned the breaststroke first? It seems to me the easiest to learn and was my first. Perhaps bufferfly is the last to be learned for most people? Or maybe I'm not quite right? Personally, I learned freestyle, then backstroke, then breaststroke, then fly... As a coach, I teach all strokes at the same time and find that the biggest learning curve is on the backstroke and fly...

I don't remember what stroke I was taught first - it seems to me those early swim lessons covered a whole lot of things at once, but maybe that's distance clouding the view. Didn't learn 'fly until I was 43/44 years old. I'm told that kids are taught front crawl first here in North America, while in Europe it's *** stroke first. My experiences in three U.K. and one German pool would seem to suggest that is or was the case. In the Munich pool, I was one of only three swimming front crawl in a very large crowd of *** strokers. One of the pools I swim in here has a large contingent of regulars of Oriental (maybe Chinese) origin and they nearly all swim *** stroke for most their laps, so I'm guessing that is/was true of parts of the far east as well.

Most of the folks like the one in the above video or the one I mentioned are old folks maybe in their 70's, so we shouldn't be too critical. It's good enough that they are swimming that much. ;) Question for all: Is the first stroke you learned your best stroke now? Freestyle is my best stroke and I did learn it first...

I learned free, then back, then ***, then fly. Fly was a very big deal-- that's how we knew we were "big time" (when coach taught us fly).

We teach front crawl first, then backstroke, then butterfly and finally breaststroke. I learned front crawl, elementary backstroke, side stroke, breaststroke, back stroke and then finally butterfly. --mj

I learned free, ***, back then butterfly. I was never really good at all of them. The backstoke turns always got me, but I never see people doing the backstroke turns anymore. They must have changed it.

Am I to infer from your question that there are strokes other than the Australian Crawl? I'd say most people learned the dog-paddle side-stroke first.