Liberal Arts Major
The first thing I do when learning a new language (note: I have not actually learned a language since I was 3) is listen to music in that language. As I hardly know anything about American popular culture, let alone any other culture, I have two sources of ideas for what that music might be: Top 20/40/etc. lists, and Disney songs. Unfortunately, Chinese people apparently only listen to music in English, so the easiest way to go appears to be Disney songs. In that case, I might as well start with my favorite, which is Colors of the Wind, from Pocahontas.
Here is the song and here are the lyrics plus their translation. I also have a handy Chrome app (Zhongwen Chinese dictionary) that gives readings and translations for each hanzi when highlighted. If you're interested in this sort of thing, I recommend you get something like that.
The first thing to do is build some handy vocabulary. Rather than go through each hanzi and talk about it at length, like with Japanese, I'm just going to make a list of interesting words. For this post, I will stick to the first two stanzas, which are:
| 我站在風裡看著你的來臨 我想要問你為的是什麼 請聆聽大地萬物心中話語 它有淚它有喜悲和生命 你從來不曾用心看看這裡 怎會發現另一個世界 但我倆在這風中如此相遇 這緣份已是多麼的神奇 | Wo zhan zai feng li kan zhe ni de lai lin Wo xiang yao wen ni wei de shi shenme Qing ling ting da di wan wu xin zhong hua yu Ta you lei Ta you xi bei he sheng ming Ni cong lai bu ceng yong xin kan kan zhe li Zen hui fa xian ling yi ge shi jie Dan wo lia zai zhe feng zhong ru ci xiang yu Zhe yuan fen Yi shi duo me de shen qi |
1. 風 fēng 'wind'
2. 之 zhī (some kind of possessive particle, glossed as 'him; her; it', which, wat)
3. 我 wǒ (1ps pronoun)
4. 在 z