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Michael Phelps has now won 5 more gold medals in addition to his already record-breaking 18 gold medals. And I would like to say, thank you Michael Phelps.

In 2008, when you were getting ready for the Beijing Olympics, you wanted to prepare by learning Mandarin Chinese. And so you did, using a very popular Mandarin-learning program.

And even though you soon went on to become a spokesperson for this popular Mandarin-learning program, with a video uploaded on August 11 of you using the program, the name of which I’m not going to mention, 9 days later you were reported saying learning Mandarin Chinese is even harder than winning your miraculous 8 gold medals in China.

Which means you didn’t really learn the language! But I can’t really blame you, considering you had to spend energy learning how to say “fruit juice” in Mandarin.

But thank you for saying “learning Mandarin is harder than winning gold”. Since 2008, it has helped us so much with our copywriting and marketing material on our website, because it proves that using conventional methods to learn Mandarin is difficult. Good marketing stuff, thanks!

Seriously, it’s helped a lot, especially when we talk about our program to potential investors, clients, and students. When we mention that you said “Learning Mandarin is harder than winning 8 gold medals,” they all laugh. So, I appreciate the great laugh trigger that helped make people sign up!

So, whenever we want to illustrate that Mandarin is difficult (and later say that we make it easy), we just say “Michael Phelps said learning Mandarin is harder than winning gold.” Simple.

If you are seeing this and you are not Michael Phelps, I need you to to Michael Phelps so he can finally learn Mandarin for reals. ENDORSE US. Just kidding. No seriously. Come to us. ?