so, today i taught my kids the muffin man song. you know "do you know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man. do you know the muffin man who lives on drury lane. yes i know the..." and so on. and i even got REALLY clever and pulled out the lyric writing skills for some new verses, substituting muffin for pizza, bagel, and icecream on verses 2, 3, and 4. sometimes my pure genious astounds me. then just to make it a truly magical monday music class (wow! all the "m"s!!!), i pulled out the classic "shoo, fly don't bother me." so anyway, i called in jenny, the korean teacher, to quickly translate just so the kids knew what they were singing about and not just screaming out a bunch of meaningless syllables like i'm pretty sure they do most of the time. this is sort of how it all went:
jenny starts going through line by line. she says to the kids "do you know the muffin man" blah blah blah blah (a bunch of korean i don't understand.) then she stops and turns to me.
jenny: who is the muffin man?
me: uh....the guy in the song.
jenny: so he makes muffins then?
me: yup. exactly. he makes muffins.
jenny: so he is a baker? he makes bread and cake too?
me: um....i guess he just makes muffins.
jenny: so, he just makes muffins all day long? do people eat that many muffins?
good point, jenny. good point.
so moving onto shoo, fly. have you guys ever really thought about the words to that song? let me refresh your memory. "shoo fly, don't bother me. shoo fly, don't bother me. shoo fly, don't bother me. 'cuz i belong to somebody. i feel. i feel. i feel like a morning star. i feel. i feel i feel like a morning star..." you can IMAGINE all the questions.
"who does the fly belong to? a morning star is a star that comes out in the morning? how is that possible when the sun is up? what does a morning star feel like?"
right, so i think the screaming of the meaningless syllables is my best option.
9 comments:
won't they don't know, won't hurt them.
perhaps you should try teaching them some american pop songs, and not translate those either. then they can just mindlessly sing along, like most of us do.
ha! i like it! maybe "i'm a slave for you" by brittany spears and then we can give a concert for the parents.
I laughed quite heartily when I read this post... My roommate, who was asleep, is now awake, I am quite certain.
Oh well... He was snoring before so maybe I can get some rest now.
Sorry I haven't emailed you back... things are getting busy as I'm sure you understand.
Do you do the fly verse with them? You know, bzz bzzz bz bzzz bz bz...that's my FAV.
Ah, children's songs...how I'll not miss you.
Possibly the best blog title EVER (in the context of the whole post I mean :).
I remember trying to teach little Sudanese kids in Egypt how to sing, "Row, Row, Row your boat". Pretty much it was like, "ROW, ROW, ROW" really loud, and then the rest was all mumbled and jumbled until we got to "Merrily", which was shouted as "MARROWY" or something like that. I'm quite certain that they didn't understand even one single word.
As a woman of unfortunately extensive experience with children and singing, I can attest to the fact that it's not just Koreans or Sudanese who have no clue what the words are...I've spent way too much time watching English speaking children's mouths struggle to keep up with the fast-paced diction of, say, "she'll be comin' round the mountain when she comes." aka "she'lluhminonmountainilleeeomCOMES!!!"
oh kristin, i taught my kids that one a few weeks ago and it was a disaster. they could never get the "toot toots" in the right place. and i TOTALLY do the bzzzz vs of "shoo, fly." anything to avoid singing actual words.
Hey Carolyn! I just wanted to say that i laughed so hard when i read your post, in fact i ran next door to tell the other teacher! Lanuages are so crazy when we translate things! i love this post!:) I hope you are doing well! Are you teaching in Korea another school year?
thanks rach. ya, i might come back next fall after taking a couple months off to travel. we will see!!!
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