This is a rather embarrassing story when I was a child. I'm telling you this because... eh, I find this story to be amusing. And reflecting upon it, it feels like my own version of 'lost in translation'
See, when I was in grade school, we had mandarin classes where we had to learn about mandarin. They flew in teachers from China to teach at my school, and for the most part. I don't really remember much about them. I do know how to spell Apple in Mandarin though, and that is Ping Guo. So It's not a complete and total loss.
Still, I didn't get good grades throughout my 6 years in grade school. And It's most likely down due to many reasons, but chief among them is that I don't know what Pin yin actually means. And AFAIK, the teachers never told me what it is until I learned it, much, MUCH later.
See, there are two forms of writing Mandarin in the modern day, Hanzi and Pinyin. Hanzi is this.
苹果
It's the 'moon runes' form of mandarin, the ones we are all familiar with. But pinyin is this.
píng guǒ
It's mandarin but adapted to be written into the English Alphabet.
I know that there are two forms of Mandarin from the get go, but what I DO NOT know is that Pinyin is the form of Mandarin written in the English Alphabet. Even worse, when the paper says Pinyin, I thought that the exercises asks for my OPINION in the matter, and that the teachers have always been spelling opinion wrong. So in each of the exercises, I always gave my opinion on what this letter means, or what that letter means. Safe to say, that experience learning mandarin soured me big time. It's also one of the reasons why I don't wanna learn mandarin even to today.
So yeah, a slice from my life. Any thoughts?