Ni hao ma ??

Salam ..

Ok .. Last semester I took LAC 100, which is, Mandarin Language Level 100 (lowest level) .. Every student need to complete 150+ credit hour to graduate (4 year course), and for USM student, 3 units are for Ko-k (1 unit per sem), 'ability' course (2 unit or 1 unit, not sure, eg : guitar, scuba diving, drama, thinking thecnic [yeah, you need someone else to teach you how to think, lol]) and lastly foreign language (2 units).

So, I decided to take foreign quite a while (since 1st year) ... top options are Japanese and Mandarin .. I started to do some survey to seniors ... These are the outcomes of the survey ;



"If you want to get A easily just take Arabic, LAA 100. You definitely get A. Good for your pointer"



"Take language that people didn't take it, eg : Russia, German, France. Easy to get A"



"Don't take mandarin. That is the most difficult language that you wanna score"





Yeah, that from senior. From my batch, I would say that :





and



6 student from Chemical Eng 2nd year take Mandarin .. uhuhuh ... and 1 of them were myself ..

Wanna my advice for mandarin ?? Don't take it .. It's really hard language ... If you really wanna take it, make sure you have lots of leisure time to learn that language .. For me, in mandarin you have to remember a lot ... in other words, you must have language trait in your brain or memorizing brain ...

Mandarin is difficult because you don't have to spell it, but memorize how its look like ...

in Malay or English, u might to spell it to pronounce it,





so, every word in Mandarin have their own unique word (its shape), how to write, and even the sound have their own level of sound ... I don't have any idea, on how many the exact number of all word ... there are maybe 10^9 words ...

To make it clear, I have a simple software, (Thank you to Najmi, former roomate), called Wakan ... some sort like dictionary ...





As you can see there (just click on it for better view), I type 'hao', and, at the bottom, all possible 'hao' will appear ... note that, every at the a word, there is a line, that is the symbolic for the level of sound ... 'hao' that I mark meaning is good ...

So, a lot of thing you have to remember .. even my chinese friends said that, what we learned were a bit difficult for non-native speaker .... but my class was quite fun ... luckily Miss Khor Gek Suan, the one and only mandarin teacher in Engenireening Campus ... uhuhu ... she is cute ... heheh

and I like when she told us story ... for example the word for women, she told us, how the word transform from a liltle girl word to the housewife women word (the story quite long) ... Another story that she told us, were about her lecturer in UM ... she said, the lecturer are from Hong Kong, and his lecturer speak in Mandarin in lecture hall ... So, maybe the way that their speak will be quite a different ... and she told us, the student in class can't really understand what he talking about ... and wow, even mandarin speakers cannot interact each other .... lol

Then, I learn 1 new song ... (actually some kids song), thanks to Najmi also, who play this song for 100 times (maybe), till I can memorize it a bit ... Yeah, this song help me a lot, in pronounciation ... you have to pronounce it right or, mandarin speaker will not understand you ... Plus, this song like explain my condition in that time ... don't get me started about that ... so this is the song ...

Ai Mei By Rainie Yang (Ai Mei, ai is love, mei, I don't know ... lol .. but, my chinese friend explain to me the meaning ... ok, ready to read the meaning ? Ai mei ; is like someone that you like but you didn't sure, if he/she is the right person for you ... lol .. quite long eh ?)



Ok, these are the lyrics .. Taken from, er, didn't remember ... Sori ... but credit for the source ..

歌曲：暧昧



暧昧让人受尽委屈

找不到相爱的证据

何时该前进何时该放弃

连拥抱都没有勇气



Ai mei rang ren shou jin wei qu

Zhao bu dao xiang ai de zheng ju

He shi gai qian jin he shi gai fang qi

Lian yong bao dou mei you yong qi



Ambiguous let people feel wronged

Could not find the evidence of loving each other

When should go forward, when should give up

Even do not have courage to hug



暧昧让人变得贪心

直到等待失去意义

无奈我和你写不出结局

放遗憾的美丽



Ai mei rang ren bian de tan xin

Zhi dao deng dai shi qu yi yi

Wu nai wo he ni xie bu chu jie ju

Fang yi han de mei li



Ambiguous make people become greedy

Until waiting lost its means

Pity that me and you could not write out an ending

To put the regretful beauty



只能陪你到这里

毕竟有些事不可以

超过了友情还不到爱情

远方就要下雨的风景



Zhi neng pei ni dao zhe li

Bi jing you xie shi bu ke yi

Chao guo le you qing hai bu dao ai qing

Yuan fang jiu yao xia yu de feng jing



Only can accompany you till here

Afterall there are some disallow matters

Surpassing friendship still not reaching the love stage

The scenery in the distant location is going to rain



到底该不该哭泣

想太多是我还想你

我很不服气

也开始怀疑

眼前的人是不是同一个真实的你



Dao di gai bu gai ku qi

Xiang tao duo shi wo hai xiang ni

Wo hen bu fu qi

Ye kai shi huai yu

Yan qian de ren shi bu shi tong yi ge zhen shi de ni



Should or should not cry

Thinking too much I still think of you

I feel very inconvincing

and starting to doubt

Is the person in front of me the same real you

Ok .. Notice that, for word with 'q' you have to pronounce it with 'ch' ... and for 'x' is pronounce if u have a 'c' word ... eg, 'xi' you pronounce it as 'si' that much alike alphabate 'c' ... 'xu' is 'su' s with similar to c but not 'cu' ...