My first singing lesson

Erin Bilot told me today that I need to do a better job keeping our blog up to date. She's definitely right but I just seem to be so busy! I know - it's hard to believe.

I've been meaning to write about my singing lesson that I had on Tuesday morning. And by singing lesson I mean Cantonese lesson. There are 9 different tones in the Cantonese language which means that one word can be pronounced 9 different ways. The pronunciations are differentiated by the "tone" or "pitch" in your voice. Fortunately, the 9 tones have been grouped into 6 in order to make things easier. Isn't that just peachy?!My teacher's name is "Minnie", as the in mouse, and she told me that people who speak Cantonese are good singers. Thus, the title of my blog.

I'm pretty sure that I didn't add a whole lot to the St. Matthias School choir and things haven't gotten any better since then, that is for sure. The singing lessons made that abundantly clear.

I spent an hour and a half trying to pronounce words at the right pitch to get a feel for the language. Most of my class went something like the following (imagine this in the singing tones of Cantonese):

Minnie: Is this a pen?
Me: This is a pen.
Minnie: Is this a book?
Me: This is a book.
Minnie: Is this the floor?
Me: No, this is not the floor.
Minnie: Is this a pen or a book?
Me: This is a book.
Minnie: Is this a sheet of paper?
Me: This is a sheet of paper.

I think you get the idea. It is all a bit ridiculous and there were quite a few points where I had to just start laughing. I was laughing at how insane this language is but also at how dumb I sounded saying things like "This is a pen" for an hour and a half. Fortunately, I did learn how to say one valuable thing: 70 Robinson Road. That would be our address. Surprisingly, it came in very handy over the last couple of days. I guess it was worth the sore vocal chords.

Tomorrow is my next class. I'm going to try and get them to change the structure a little bit so that it's more conversational. I think I could do without knowing how to say "This is a cat." That really just isn't going to help me in a taxi. We'll see. Hopefully I'll be more in tune tomorrow!

That's all for now. We had a very long day. Chris didn't get home until 9. I painted all day and then made an actual dinner since I'm trying to be more domestic. It's now 10:20 p.m. and Wedding Crashers has just started. I, however, am off to bed.