10 Funny Mandarin Chinese Mistakes I Made My First Two Years

According to the Foreign Service Institute, Mandarin Chinese is one of the hardest languages for a native English speaker to learn, taking over 2200 hours of language time to master. What are the reasons? It’s tonal, it has tens of thousands of characters, and has a limited phonetic inventory, all of which combine to give someone a real headache – and Chinese people around you a real laugh! No wonder I made so many mistakes in my first two years learning Chinese.

Here are 5 mistakes to look out for:

Greatest Tragedy to Greatest Triumph

Can God make good come out of tragedy? God used the greatest tragedy in the history of man to bring about the greatest triumph in the death of Jesus on the cross and the resurrection of Jesus from the grave. The tragedy is that God in human flesh was executed. Jesus, who taught us how to live, who is just and righteous, who loves the meek and downtrodden, who loved on sinners and healed the sick and brought the death back to life. The triumph is God’s ultimate triumph over sin and death. “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The greatest tragedy became the greatest triumph! Praise the Lord!

Inaugural Post

Hello world! Welcome to the Theology, Culture, Language blog. My name is Rose. I am a Christian, am an avid language learner, and have a degree in international relations. On this blog, I’ll be writing about theology, culture, and language and the intersection of those worlds.

My interest in international cultures and languages is wide-ranging, having spent a considerable time of my childhood in Africa, a couple of months in Japan, and a couple of years in China. I’ve also had countless conversations in Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin. Some posts will be in these languages, others will be about these languages.

My Christian faith is also a huge part of my life, so I will also be posting about my thoughts on religion and philosophy. I write from an evangelical protestant position.

If you see something of interest, please feel free to post a comment.

Cheers,

Rose