“Yall gonna learn Chinese,” ChineseAmerican MC Jin promises the bullies in his breakout hit, aptly titled “Learn Chinese.” Its a tune with no subtle undertones, and even if he were dropping rhymes in modern Chinese rather than English, the written lyrics would carry the same meaning.

Had MC Jin been making threats a few thousand years ago, however, there would have been far more subtleties to work out. The ancient Chinese considered learning and teaching to be two halves of the same coin, and thus the characters 学 (xu9, to study) and 教 (ji`o, to teach) were used interchangeably to mean the same thing. “The Discourse of States” (《国语》Gu5y^), an ancient collection of records compiled over 3,000 years ago, makes a fine example of this with the lesson: “顺德以学子，择言以教子” (sh& d9 y@ xu9 z@, z9 y1n y@ ji`o z@. Teach your son with ethical principles and selected useful words). In this scenario, both 学 and 教mean “teach.”In modern Chinese, the two characters have taken on distinct meanings, with 学 keeping a grip on the meaning “to learn.” Thus, when Confucius said, “学而不思则罔，思而不学则殆” (xu9 9r b& s~ z9 w2ng, s~ 9r b& xu9 z9 d3i) over two centuries ago, he stuck to 学 to convey the meaning,“Learning without reasoning leads to confusion, thinking without learning is a waste of effort.”Today, we still use the word 学in this way, albeit with simpler catchphrases like “活到老, 学到老”(hu5 d3o l2o, xu9 d3o l2o), or, “Youre never too old to learn.”

It says something about Chinese