Lovely Language

So.. I went to speak Japanese the other day and it came out this awkward mix of Chinese and Japanese... wo daisuki ni... (I'm pretty sure my Japanese isn't even correct.) It took my Chinese teacher looking at me like I had grown a second head for me to realize my mistake. It was embarrassing.

Maybe this means my brain is finally switching over to Chinese.. One can only hope.

Speaking of switching to Chinese...

So.. This is a close up of the sheet music for the Taiwanese song.
I didn't have it completely translated until about a week ago so I had to
mumble through the last half of the song. I felt really special.

There is going to be this big choir competition at school tomorrow. I have no idea what's going on other than
1) My class is going first
2) I have to wear my skirt and short sleeved shirt
3)Each class is singing two songs: Alleluia (Canon?) and a song of their choosing. My class chose a song called, wait for it...


母親的名叫台灣 

Yah. Imagine my reaction when I got the sheet music. It was something along the lines of.. You expect me to sing this? haha I can totally read Chinese. I don't know what your talking abo-It's Taiwanese?! Great. Never mind. I take that back. HELP!!

I now know it's pronounced Mu Chin E Mia Gyo Daiwan and a rough English translation is Mother's Name is Taiwan.  It's actually a really pretty song. (I found a video of the Kaohsiung Chamber performing this song here. The only difference is that we don't have guys to sing it with us.)

I'll let you know how things go tomorrow. I'll even bring my camera and see if I can rope someone into taking pictures so you can play Where's The Foreigner :)

Erhu and Jia Ren Gu

Hey all!

I have quite the list of things to tell you about. Hopefully it will make up for my lack of an update..... Pfft. Who am I kidding? Of course it will. ;)

I'm going to start with this afternoon because, well, it was pretty freaking awesome.

This is how far we biked.

 Lea and I went exploring today. We got out of school early and rode our bikes around Yilan. We found a variety of things. A Domino's Pizza, several tea shops, a book store and a park...

As cool as those things are, they weren't our main accomplishments for this afternoon.

We managed to have two conversations in Chinese. Not one, but TWO!!! How amazing is that?? We were pretty stoked. The first took place at a store that sells uniforms and went something like this:

Lea: do you have Lan Yang bei se mao yi? (Lan Yang's white sweater)
Shopkeeper: wo you (I have)
~Lea tries it on~
Me: duo shao qian (how much?)
SK: si bai ba ($480)

We learned colors and the names of clothing about a week ago but never really had a use for it until now. :)

The second occurred at the park. We were sitting at a table chatting when a woman in a bright red shirt stopped her bike beside us and started talking to us. I can't quote that conversation word for word like the last one but we managed to convey that we are exchange students (not that our hair/skin color didn't do that for us); that we're going to be here for one year (yi nian); that we don't have class right now (sheng ku? meiyou); that Lea is from Canada while I'm from the US (wo mei guo/ wo lai zi janada).

Granted, we still didn't get 70% of what the woman said but if you compare it to how much we would've understood last month (which is none of it) I'd say we did pretty good. :)

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I fell in love last week.

We were in Chinese class when we heard this obnoxious squawking noise. Our teacher, Kim, told us that the Chinese orchestra practicing in the building next to us and that the sound was from the an instrument similar to a trumpet.

Our curiosity was temporarily quenched only to be rekindled when we went to relocate to the library. Our gazes Kim asked us if we wanted to go look at the orchestra.

How could I possibly say no?

We walked down a short hallway and up a set of stairs, all the while listening to the most interesting sound. We turned a corner and what is that??

This, my friends, is an Erhu also known as the Chinese Violin. It was love at first sight, no joke. There were about 7 girls sitting around practicing and one of them was nice enough to let me and Lea try them. She taught me how to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Oh my god. Life made right there. I can die now.


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..........
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Okay, maybe not. But when I can make music like these people THEN I can die a happy woman

Erhu Solo
Coldplay's Clocks  <


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I am a kung fu fan master ninja. Beware. :)

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My other fixation is this song.

「佳人歌」李延年

北方有佳人
絕世而獨立
一顧傾人城
再顧傾人國
寧不知傾城與傾國
佳人難再得

Jia Ren Gu - Li Yan Nian

Bei fang you jia ren,
jue shi er du li
Yi gu qing ren cheng
Zai gu qing ren guo
Ning bu zhi qing cheng yu cheng guo
Jia ren nan zai de

A rare beauty from the north, she's the finest lady on Earth
A glance from her, the whole city goes down
A second glance leaves the nation in ruins
There exists no city or nation, that has been more cherished
That a beauty like this.

 Jia Ren Gu is commonly studied in Chinese/Taiwanese schools as a poem but it was originally a song. The composer, Li Yan Nian, was a government official/court musician. He wrote this song to advertise his sister to the emperor. The emperor was intrigued by the mysterious beauty from the North and ordered that she come to court. He married her and she eventually was promoted to the status of wife/queen. (I don't know the exact details but this is the best summary I can give without Wiki-ing anything)

Beauty Song (Jia Ren Gu)


The clip is from the movie House of Flying Daggers. (That movie is EPIC). I first heard this song in that movie. I'd pretty much forgotten about it until I went to go find videos of people playing the Erhu and I stumbled upon this video. I remembered how much I loved it so I told my Chinese teacher that I wanted to learn that song... I almost have it memorized. I can hum the tune and sing the first line.. :)

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I have more to write but I'm out of creative juices for tonight.. No promises about updates because I've been pretty bad about following through.. Enjoy the videos :)

K

A Chinese Alphabet??

Did you know that Chinese has an alphabet?

Neither did I. 

I heard about it my first full day here. I was at Leanne's house and one of the Brazilian kids was showing off his skills at Bopomofo, which is the common name of the alphabet. The characters system is called Mandarin Phonetic Symbols (MPS).

Here's how it works. There are initial sounds -- which I've written below along with their pinyin translation -- and the final sounds... Essentially consonants and vowels. 

We looked at the initials in my first Chinese class. I'll explain it to the best of my ability. 

The first eleven are pretty easy. Just read them like there's a "uh" after the letter. Buh, puh, muh, fuh....... 

ㄅ b 
ㄆ p 
ㄇ m
ㄈ f

ㄉ d
ㄊ t
ㄋ n
ㄌ l

ㄍ g
ㄎ k
ㄏ h

These three are said with a big smile :) 
ㄐ j       "jee"
ㄑ q    "chee"
ㄒ x     "shee"

Curl your tongue back in your mouth for these. 
ㄓ zh 
ㄔ ch
ㄕ sh
ㄖ r      

"r"  is the hardest to pronounce because it sounds like a mix between a j and an r. Your tongue gets pulled back the farthest for this one. 

These are like a hissing sound. 
ㄗ z 
ㄘ c
ㄙ s


Fun fact: Chinese keyboards have both English and MPS. I separated the characters above the same way that they're separated on the MPS keyboard. It goes from left to right. The initials dominate the left side of they keyboard while the finals reside on the right. The four tone buttons are above the groups of three. If you're having a hard time visualizing this and have a iTouch/iPad/iPhone, the MPS keyboard is called "Chinese - Traditional - Zhuyin." Check it out. That's your homework. :D