One of the reasons people say Mandarin is a tough language is due to the tones. There are five of them and with out getting into too much detail, a word like “ma” in English has five different meanings in Mandarin due to the various tones: mā, má, mǎ, mà, and ma. One of those is “mom” and another means “horse” and another indicates you just asked a question; the remaining two are a mystery to me!
Anyway, yesterday during work I sent out a message on the WeChat group for the running club asking if anyone wanted to run after work. Well, I thought that’s what I asked. A few co-workers started to chuckle as I mixed up the Chinese characters for one of the “ma”s and asked if anyone wants to run a horse marathon! Oops! Maybe that’s why there were only two of us who went running. Or it could’ve been the high temp that hit 102F with a heat index of 117F… needless to say it was a tough 5.5km and I was still sweating 90 minutes after finishing AND after taking a cold shower. And I learned a new lesson in Mandarin: Mind your “ma”!
我爱你妈妈！