Comments on: Sinister S.H.E

By: Grnmtngrl

Grnmtngrl — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:17:34 +0000

Actually, it’s not just business schools who are learning Chinese. Chinese was one of only two languages offered at my tiny Midwestern high school. I’ve noticed a lot of rural public schools beginning to offer Chinese in recent years.

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:16:07 +0000

The lyrics of this song do not represent nationalist or pro-communist sentiments in my mind at all. As a student of Mandarin I’ve come to appreciate that “Chinese” does not refer at all to the modern PRC government, despite its dominance over the nation. It is instead thousands of years of rich culture epitomised in a language that becomes increasingly less harsh and unsavoury the more it’s experienced. Despite the often rough initials and finals, the process of understanding the language in and of itself, while simultaneously learning the correlating cultural depth, renders it absolutely beautiful.

This song is not about the inexorable conquest of China over the world; rather, it reflects the world’s increasing recognition of its culture and history, embodied in ‘zhong guo hua’. This is not Chinese politics, propaganda or subversion, but merely an oft-ignored language and all its connotations striving for recognition alongside English.

By: Grant

Grant — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:10:48 +0000

Quoting Hu: “Shouldn’t they be a little proud, happy or relieved”?

Happy or relieved, sure! Can understand that. But proud of what? The beauty of Mandarin like the song states? I think it will be some time before we start making love to Mandarin instead of Italian, Spanish or Portuguese.

I love learning languages but Mandarin does not strike me as sounding beautiful like the song claims (or is the beauty of Chinese in its elegant phrases, not its pronunciation?). Elegant phrases aside, an overwhelming number (11 out of 23) of pinyin syllable initials are some form of fricative or affricative (transcibed as c, ch, h, j, q, r, s, sh, x, z, zh). The rhotic approximant final sound ‘ar’ sounds like a pirate of yesteryear saying ‘are!’. There are only 4 tones (5 if you include the neutral tone). It makes the language sound robotic, compared to other tonal languages like Thai or Cantonese. This fact is hidden only when sung to a musical tune.

In any case, people don’t choose to learn Mandarin for its beauty. They choose to learn it for its usefulness.
David said it in his post:
“Filipino certainly sounds a lot simpler than Mandarin but I think I’d better focus on becoming conversational in the latter before attempting to learn another language!”

If you just want to speak a language to be trendy or to show how smart you are (as the song suggests), you should learn how to read and speak Cantonese instead. It also sounds a lot more vibrant (though you may need to use some earplugs at first!). From there, you can more easily learn to speak and read Mandarin if you later decide to. In the mean time you can have a great time in Hong Kong. (but hurry, before Putonghua, oops I mean Mandarin, takes over!)

By: David

David — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 10:52:13 +0000

Filipino certainly sounds a lot simpler than Mandarin but I think I’d better focus on becoming conversational in the latter before attempting to learn another language! Unfortunately I don’t think my brain is cut out for linguistics

By: Nikkei

Nikkei — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 10:01:31 +0000

I meant right not, write Sorry for the mistake there.

By: Nikkei

Nikkei — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 10:00:16 +0000

Maybe you should try learning Filipino just for the fun of learning an Asian language. It’s easier to learn since Tagalog (or Filipino) doesn’t have its own alphabet ( well it had one, but we don’t use it now, we use the English alphabet) , aside from that, Filipino is somewhat based on Spanish so the words are easier to pronounce. The pronunciation rule also follows a read it as you see it pattern so you can just grab any Filipino text and start reading it out loud. For example, the word Mabuhay. It is read as ma-boo-high. So there, quite easy write?

I must say, even if I’m Asian, I find studying Mandarin and Korean difficult. I can’t seem to wrap my tongue around there syllables and tones. But oh well, I guess I just have to work harder.

By: zack

zack — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:54:16 +0000

I was shocked when I found out what the lyrics were to this song. It’s not a little sinister is outright chauvanism, a song glorifying the chinese language and gloating that people are now learning it. I nearly decided to stop learning chinese after this, its like they’re mocking you and from a pop group as well. It’s very worrying, just goes to show how entrenched and accepted this kind of chuavanism is in Chinese culture.

By: David

David — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 03:12:23 +0000

Now that is ironic but good for them standing up for what they believe in. I guess that debunks my theory about them being part of the propaganda machine.

By: Ed

Ed — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:20:48 +0000

What makes it more ironic is that S.H.E. came out for Taiwan independence and are now frowned upon in China.

By: David

David — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:24:59 +0000

Apologies that you comment took a while to appear Hu, it got stuck in the moderation queue! Thanks again for your comments, one correction – I'm not from the US (thank goodness) – I'm British from the UK!!

The article you linked to was very interesting and I have no doubt that Chinese is becoming an ever more important language. I'd personally love to learn Mandarin but having tried my hand at Japanese and Korean at university have found learning Asian languages extremely hard. If I get another chance to live out there maybe I will take it up more seriously.