Everyday, I go to work with my colleague and friend who lives just 3 minutes away from me. In the train we either work on our own personal projects or discuss various topics. One of the regular subject is about language, in particular Chinese Mandarin and Vietnamese because I have learned a little bit in Uni and like to sing Chinese (pinyin) Karaoke 😂 so I often ask him about translations, pronunciations and we often talk about differences and similitudes between Chinese and Vietnamese.
This week we've been discussing some of the Chinese songs I've been seeing people share on the Internet, in particular:
- Wǒ men bù yī yàng (我们不一样)
- Xué māo jiào (学猫叫)
- You dian tian (有点甜)
I then made him realised that Xué māo jiào and You dian tian are using the same chord progression and the melody of the chorus was extremely similar. Someone has actually even made a mash up performance mixing the two song together.
Today, I brought the two songs back with some questions of the pronunciation of the pinyin letter H in Mandarin. When I learned it the H in pinyin is to be read with a throat sound at the beginning but in the song they pronounced it like the H in the english "hello". And it turns out that reading an H word on its own and as part of a sentence especially in a song would be pronounced differently, probably to because it sounds less odd.
The second question was about the letter G (like the "ge" in "yī gè rén 一个人"), is it pronounced like a G in the english word "gap" or more like in a K in the english word "Koala" for example. I was taught it as a K but he told me that it's a G. Then he went on the web looking for some material to support his opinion and we found out that the IPA phonem for the pinyin G is (k) which for him does not make sense. So we went on and on and try to compare to other English and Vietnamese words. We still haven't agreed on the correct one yet but I guess the IPA should be the correct one but in practice both are understood and no one would notice. Additionally, the sound of a K would modified by the vowels that follows it that could make it sound more like a G.
I've always found languages interesting and like to compare the to one another, especially asian languages as I have been exposed to Vietnamese, Mandarin, a little bit of Cantonese, Japanese, Thai and Lao.
I think this won't be the last time we will be discussing this lol.
Previously on my Ulog:
- ULOG 117 - Myth busting: The Steem Witnesses and the Reward Pool
- ULOG 115 - What I think of Fiskars X21 axe and X7 hatchet
- ULOG 113 - TGIF
- ULOG 112 - Restaurant Review: de Pho in Lemon Grove food court in Chatswood
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