毁坏and破坏is a group of words often seen and heard but also very confusing for many Chinese languagelearners. When you attend to Mandarin language courses in China, teachers may explain the meanings and application of both words in detail. However, if you want to totally understand them, you need to feel it in the actual sentences. 毁坏carries the meaning of “to destroy” such as 毁坏公物. The objects are mostly the specific things. Except for the initiative action, it can also express to destroy because of the natural causes.

However, for the word 破坏, there are three levels of meanings. it can be used to destroy the buildings like 破坏机器and破坏文物. The second application is to show things are damaged such as 破坏名誉. In addition it can also used to show violate the laws. You can say 破坏纪律and破坏协定. From the applications mentioned above, we can see that the objectives of 破坏can be both the specific things and the abstract things, but mostly caused by people.

After learning the word 混合, it is possible for you to associate with another word 混淆. These two words look difficult to tell apart but actually the differences are obvious. When teachers teach Mandarin language, they may tell you 混合is a verb to mix two things together. Accordingly, you can say 把两种液体混合起来, meaning that two different things are combined together. If it is applied to the sports meeting, it means the programs needing the cooperation of male and female, for instance, 男女混合双打比赛.

For 混淆, it means to combine two things together so that we can’t tell them apart because the boundary is not clear. Since it indicates the combination of two materials, concepts or contents and difficult to tell apart, the objects are mostly the abstract things such as 混淆视听. Therefore, you can make sentences like 敌我界限，不容混淆. According to the explanation above, we can understand the differences of both words as the differences of the degrees of mixing and also the things are mixed.