I was born in Canada, so I learned my Chinese in Canada. When I first learned 1 , I made a funny mistake.
In my first class, the teacher wanted to make us know about each other well, so she let us talk about 2 names, hobbies or other things to our classmates. I introduced myself and then said, "I have a lot of friends, and they are all mu." I knew the 3 mu because I had a female(雌性的)dog. My teacher said, "When you talk about people, you cannot say mu. You should say nü." "OK." I nodded. 4 I felt confused(困惑的), because in English, "female" is just one word.
Later that class, the teacher let everyone make a word group and 5 the word group on the notebook then share it on the blackboard. I was the first one to go up. I tried to do well and 6 wrote "nü sheep". The teacher looked at the words and then asked the students, "Do you all 7 the words?" All he students answered, "Yes." The teacher asked "Why do all of you know, but I don't? What do they mean?"
"Female sheep," 8 answered together.
The teacher laughed and said, "Please remember that Chinese and English are 9 . The word nü is only used for people."
I sometimes make jokes(玩笑)about my 10 as I am learning Chinese. These funny mistakes help me a lot. For example, from that time on, I remembered that mu and nü are different, and I will never mix them up again.