Mandarin Chinese songs for high beginner chinese student?

[owshawng]

Can anyone recommend an album or singer for me? I know about 400 to 500 words in mandarin and want to start listening to songs in mandarin. I have a couple of children's albums, but I want to start listening to adults sing.

I'm looking for something with simple lyrics and a slower beat. Kind of like someone studying english could learn by listening to the Beatles, but not someone like 50 Cent or Emminem which would be too fast.

[Ferno]

Are you sure? Songs often have a lot of metaphorical and unstandard language, and of course tones aren't used when singing... so it's not the best way to learn Mandarin... although I guess it's better than nothing (or quiting studying because you're bored)

[roddy]

Songs often have a lot of metaphorical and unstandard language

Not if they've got 'simple lyrics', as the OP asks for, and

tones aren't used when singing

Tones aren't used in newspapers either, but it's no reason to stop using them. You might not find music useful for learning, but plenty of other people do. It's a lot more useful than you've somehow convinced yourself.

You could try having a look at PinyinLyrics.com, a site I started a while ago and promptly forgot about. Of the top of my head, these might be good places to start . . .

http://www.pinyinlyrics.com/?p=19

http://www.pinyinlyrics.com/?p=29

http://www.pinyinlyrics.com/?p=8

http://www.pinyinlyrics.com/?p=4

Roddy

[randall_flagg]

My first song was by Ai Jing "My 1997". No worries, it is in Chinese. I vividly remember figuring out what it meant as I kept listening to it, piecing things together bit by bit. What fun! And it sounds good, too!

[Ferno]

Songs often have a lot of metaphorical and unstandard language

Not if they've got 'simple lyrics'' date=' as the OP asks for, and

tones aren't used when singing

Tones aren't used in newspapers either, but it's no reason to stop using them. You might not find music useful for learning, but plenty of other people do. It's a lot more useful than you've somehow convinced yourself.

I stand corrected then

btw, can you or anyone else tell me what "wo de xi" means? my ??? I have heard this many times on songs on the radio (difficult to track down the character lyrics if you don't know chinese ). There's just too many words pronounced "xi", what's the meaning in the context of a pop/love song?

[Lu]

Don't you mean Wo de xin (my heart)?

Owshawng: try Teresa Teng (Deng Lijun)'s Yueliang daibiao wo de xin, it's a classic, and not too hard.

[Ferno]

hmm.. i've heard it a lot of times, is it possible that I've been missing the "n" final the whole time? maybe..

[Quest]

hmm.. i've heard it a lot of times, is it possible that I've been missing the "n" final the whole time? maybe..

Maybe if you can name a song that has that in it?

[Ferno]

if I knew the names of the songs then I could look up the character lyrics on baidu myself

I'll try to pay attention to the DJ/song announcer next time. Any clue-words that can tip me off when they are going to say the actual name of the song? Would they say "this song is called..." "zhe4 ge ge1qu3 jiao4..." or "this is" "zhe4 shi4..." etc?? sorry if its a dumb question, but I've found that "word choice" or "phrasing" for things can be quite different from European languages

[owshawng]

Thanks everyone for your input. Today went to Chinatown and purchased

CD Teresa Teng - not sure of the title, it's a memorial compilation of her greatest hits. It also comes with a hardcover book. Looks to be a brief biography and it also has the lyrics for the songs in chinese.

DVD

F.I.R. I wanna fly. This comes with a booklet of the lyrics in chinese

Stef Sun - not sure of the title One of the songs is called Ming Tian

Elva - a karaoke dvd (I remembered I liked some of her songs plus it was free since I

bought 2 other dvds)

[HashiriKata]

Hi owshawng,

I've got this song for you which is slow and simple enough to follow (even when you get stuck, a few English lines in it will fill the gaps for you ). Using the title, you can get it from Baidu:

赤道和北极

love you and love me

从不曾忘记

和你在一起的甜蜜

love you and love me

从不曾怀疑

你是我永远的唯一

可是忽然仿佛丢了你

my love 我冷的无法呼吸

可是忽然仿佛回不去

像是只迷途在北极的鱼

i miss you now where’re you going

想念曾经最温暖的海底

i need you now where’re you going

想让赤道温暖最寒冷的北极

love you and love me

如果你还有感应

就指引我游向你

love you and love me

但大海无边无际

我还能不能重回到你的怀里

Cheers,

[Quest]

if I knew the names of the songs then I could look up the character lyrics on baidu myself

I guess you can solve the puzzle yourself then, since you can always gather whatever words you understand in a song, and do a reverse lookup on baidu.

[Ferno]

"reverse look up"? what's that? yes I do already try to listen to words or phrases I know and input the characters in baidu. In this case I would have to make sure that by the time I hear "wo de xi" (xin?) the song won't end before I can pick up something meaningful (lyric searches become difficult if all you catch is "自己" and "我爱你" )

on a similar topic, I keep hearing the announcement "yin1 yue4 guo2/3 dao4".. .music ?? does anyone know what this could mean? "guo dao" does not show up as any 2 syllable word...

(sorry about the tone on the "guo", I can't tell the difference between 2nd and 3rd tones that aren't in isolation)

[skylee]

I keep hearing the announcement "yin1 yue4 guo2/3 dao4".. .music ?? does anyone know what this could mean? "guo dao" does not show up as any 2 syllable word...

If it is yinyue guodu, then I guess it is "music nation/realm". Take a look at this.

If you are sure it is dao4, then I can only think of 國道 (national highway).

[Ferno]

okay then how about another announcement they make sometimes... "yin1 yue4 he2" anyone know what the "he2" means?

[geraldc]

I think it's music box

[Ferno]

hey yeah that probably makes sense for the title of a music segment on the radio.

i would never have figured that out by myself too many characters/morphemes pronounced he2 this is going to be a bigger and bigger problem the more definitions I know!

[Quest]

i would never have figured that out by myself too many characters/morphemes pronounced he2 this is going to be a bigger and bigger problem the more definitions I know!

Well yea, if he2 by itself, you can't be sure what it is, but yin1yue4he2 is pretty clear.

It's like in English, if you hear the sound "ker" on the radio, what can it possibly mean? It doesn't mean anything unless you also hear the other sound(s) that go with it. Is the preceding sound "work", "bunk", "tank" etc.. It's just that in Chinese, the root components are also defined. So, if it was in Chinese, both "work" and "(k)er" would have meanings, but when you hear them together you are suppose to catch worker and interpret them as worker, not work ker, and then say "but ker is used in many other words, how can I be sure..."

Don't get hung up on one sound/syllable you hear, hear the sentence in whole. If there's ambiguity, try to catch the "as in" phrases: 盒，盒子的盒。 "ker" as in "worker". Usually, people would know when there is ambiguity in what they say, and would try to elaborate. If they dont, then it's probably unambiguous.

[Ferno]

hmm

"worker" "tanker" "bunker" are all defined words. "yin1yue4 he2" is "yin1yue4" with a single syllable morpheme/word added on... "he2" - this he2 is mapped to several characters.

are there any rules that would stop me from interpreting this as, for example "music river" (he2=河) ?

If there's ambiguity, try to catch the "as in" phrases: 盒，盒子的盒。

people do this??? I thought that this XY的X structure was only for telling someone the specific character for a surname. hmm, i guess this is proof that native Chinese speakers have to be thinking in terms of character morphemes all the time... can mandarin be learned without learning the characters..?

[LiYuanXi]

of course tones aren't used when singing.

Just for your information, for those 'higher standard' songs, tones are important and are used when singing. Hence, when writing lyrics for a song, we must be careful not 倒字.

If the note of a particular of the song does not go with the word, we will either change the word or sing the word with more 'force'.

Sorry, it is hard to explain this but i hope you guys understood!