Californication meets Tranpacificism

So it’s one of my birthday of one of my friend’s today (Agnes), so I thought that instead of being overly traditional (card/email with happy birthday song/etc..) I should do what’s appropriate for here. My birthday was a month ago (6/8, Gemini!), and I had Las Mananitas sang to me by a cool folk singer dude. This is a popular Spanish song in Mexico for people’s birthdays, so I goog’d it. First, I found a Flash version of it. Aye! I wanted the lyrics written though, so I couldn’t searching. I got confused about whether there was more than one song by this name, seeing the word cumpleanos (spanish for birthday) nowhere in the flash, I got worried. Ends up it is the right song, and I found a nice site with the Lyrics, along with a translation. Trying to keep entries smaller, so the actual song’s below..!

Las mañanitas

Éstas son las mañanitas These are the morning verses
Que cantaba el Rey David, That King David used to sing,
A las muchachas bonitas To the beautiful young ladies,
Se las cantaba así. He would sing them like this.

Despierta, mi bien, despierta, Wake up, darling, wake up,
Mira que ya amaneció, Look, the dawn has broken,
Ya los pajaritos cantan, The birds are singing,
La luna ya se metió. The moon has already gone down.

Éstas son las mañanitas These are the morning verses
Que cantaba el Rey David, That King David used to sing,
Hoy por ser día de tu santo Today because it’s your saint’s day
Te las cantamos a ti. We’re singing them to you.

[end lyrics]
My spanish teacher did something else that was kind of funny for our birthdays (we’ve had at least 4 so far, 2+ to go! Seems like a lot in 10 weeks, but I guess it is ~24 ppl..) He claimed it was a Spanish birthday song, and it took me a bit to figure out what was really going on. Took other people way, way longer, even after he translated it. I was crackin up.. Here:

“Apio Verde, a ti.
Apio verde, a ti.
Apio verde a Alyssa.
Apio verde, a ti.”

(Her birthday was a week before mine.)
Then he translated it for us. Apio is celery, verde is green. So.. green celery to you? Huh? If you missed the joke, you’ll have to sound it out, not just read it.
It’s definitely only funny to english speakers. Maybe particularly funny to people learning spanish? Dunno..!

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