Is Matt Redman Chinese in his thinking?

Matt Redman and his Grammy awards

Contemporary Gospel music singer and song writer, Matt Redman, recently won two Grammy's for his song "10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)". I love this song. I sing it often and have heard many groups sing it too. What struck me last Saturday as we were singing the song was, "I wonder if Matt Redman is Chinese?"

Silly thought. Of course not!

What triggered that thought was his use of the phrase "10,000 Reasons". In Chinese, we use the number 10,000 or 万 to describe "everything", "all", or anything uncountable. We do have words for numbers greater than 10,000, but somehow, 10,000 is good enough to describe what cannot be counted, which is precisely what Matt was trying to describe. We have an infinite number of reasons to bless God.

I remembered my friend had posted a link for the Chinese translation of Matt's song. I hunted it down and found it. The Taiwanese did an excellent translation, as they always do. Since "ten thousand" has way more syllables than 万 in Chinese, they used 上万 instead, which simply means "tens of thousands". How good can it get? Whichever word you use, it still means the same. There are infinite reasons to bless the Lord.

Matt Redman is definitely not Chinese, but the way he writes song lyrics certainly is! So, who said English (west) and Chinese (east) may never meet?

Have fun learning a new language to bless the Lord!

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