Tuesday, March 3, 2009

how do you sing "happy birthday" in chinese?

Makayla had a birthday party for one of her classmates - Alex, this past weekend. Joe happened to be there when they were getting ready for the cake.

Antonia (one of Mak's classmate): "we can sing happy birthday in English, Polish, Chinese, French...."
Joe: "Really? Chinese???? How?"

Then the kids in unison, as if they practiced - started to sing Happy Birthday in Chinese. . . .

or so they thought.

To Joe's great amazement and amusement, they were not at all singing in Chinese.

This is what they were singing:

"Chin chin nay nay quai nai~ Chin chin nay nay quai nai ~"

Joe just started to crack up and Alex's dad was like "are they singing in Chinese?" and Joe answered, "I don't know what language they are signing in." but Joe knew that this was the song Makayla made up in her jibberish period.

It was just amazing to see 12 kids sing this jibberish song in unison. It's too embarrassing at this point to tell the children that what they are singing is in fact not only NOT chinese but NOT a language at all!

Since I missed the whole thing, I asked Makayla when she came back from the party.

Me: "I heard that you guys sang in Chinese - how did all the kids know to sing it?"
Mak: (confidently) "Because Antonia and I taught them!"
Me: (not having the heart to tell her that it's not Chinese) "Rrrrrriiiiigggghhhhtttt. Okay...okay..."

Oh, the kicker was that Ethan chimed in with already memorized and well-practiced "chin-chin-nay-nay-quai-nai". oh brother.