Thursday, May 20, 2010

A Whole New Language

At least for me!

Jiu Jian (is it okay if I call him JJ after this post? And you'll all remember that?) writes and sings primarily in Mandarin. Being Singaporean, he does speak English, extremely well. I could have just relied on JJ's English skills for this project, but no! Not me! Why make it easy on yourself when you can raise the bar? So, I decided I would attempt to learn at least a little bit of Mandarin AND I would sing in Mandarin.

Seriously, I enjoy learning new languages, even though I rarely reach fluency. And even more seriously, I think it is a sign of respect for another country and culture to at least attempt to learn some of their language. In addition, it is great for my brain. Yours too. Try it.

JJ seemed pretty happy that I wanted to do this, so off I went. I've been studying Mandarin on and off since September using the Rosetta Stone software. Expensive, but I highly recommend it. And then, sometime last month, JJ sent me the lyrics to two songs that we will be singing on the 2V10F Soiree. One is a Mandarin translation of All For One from High School Musical 2. I'll be singing that with the kids. The other is an absolutely beautiful trio from a Mandarin musical written by one of JJ's colleagues. Yup, that means I dragged Richard (that's my husband and frequent singing partner) into this as well. After all these years, I think he's getting used to my crazy ideas.

So, here's part of what I received from JJ:

身边人影 左右褪尽

所有声音 渐渐停息

天地之大 我的眼眸中只有她

有没有人懂我 心中也有一朵

送不出去的花?

I then took these lyrics to www.Pin1yin1.com and transliterated them into Pinyin. Pinyin uses the Roman alphabet (in case you forgot, that's the one we native English speakers and most western languages use). So then I ended up with this:

身边人影 左右褪尽
shēn biān rén yǐng zuǒ yòu tùi jìn

所有声音 渐渐停息
suǒ yǒu shēng yīn jiàn jiàn tíng xī

天地之大 我的眼眸中只有她
tiān dì zhī dà wǒ de yǎn móu zhōng zhǐ yǒu tā

有没有人懂我 心中也有一朵
yǒu méi yǒu rén dǒng wǒ xīn zhōng yě yǒu yī duǒ

送不出去的花?
sòng bù chū qù de huā?

JJ also sent me a recording of the song, so now I could start practicing. I did send the lyrics back to JJ to make sure they were correct; he only had to make one or two changes.

So now, every day (okay, I took yesterday off!), I am either just saying the syllables or singing along with JJ. Tuesday I found I was getting stuck on 2 syllables. It felt like a total tongue twister to say: xīn zhōng. A simple English translation would be shin jong, and that's really simple. So, I wrote the words on a post-it note and stuck it next to me on the piano. Since I was teaching and practicing quite a bit that day, I would just say them throughout the day. By 4:00 pm, I could say it without stumbling.

Probably by the end of next week, I'm planning on posting a clip of me working on this. I think it will be interesting for all of you to hear me at work!

2 comments:

  1. Can't Wait to see the clip!! Isn't the internet great? I use the translator in google often and it always leaves me amazed at the great things one can do with the internet. Oh, and the song must be "A Whole New World" I know only know Pebo Bryson singing it, is it from Aladdin?

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  2. Yes! We have a winner! MB figured out the first song title connection. Way to go MB. I can tell that I have to make the next ones more difficult....tee hee hee.

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