Help with translation of Chinese kids song

[GT98]

Wow shes adorable!

[minigirl]

id love to help , but i dont speak cantonese

how about just remain it as a little mystery

[agallag]

If you could somehow get a recording of her singing it, I could get my girlfriend or her parents to give it a listen. I don't think the phonetics will do it.

[UtwigMU]

Just an idea:

I was on this presentation of China once and girl who has studied there for a few years said that even on uni with foreigners they started a day with a song (something like one two, tree, ... insert alegories of happy citizen doing his duty in socialist society).

[Mcollector]

The only thing I might be right getting out of it (besides "Hong Kong") is "Ho," which might mean "good."
Problem is, there are tones to the words and sometimes unaspirated consonants which an untrained ear might easily miss. For example, "hong" could mean "red", "bear", "sugar" or "cut", depending on how you say it. Add to all this the multiple dialects of Chinese, even of Cantonese. I'll ask my sweetie in the morning when she gets up. She's used to quai lo like me mispronouncing Cantonese, so she might be able to get something out of it. But I think you're missing letters, as well as the tones. She speaks HK Cantonese dialect, and one of the inland Cantonese dialects, so she might get something out of it.

[cjolley]

Originally posted by minigirl
id love to help , but i dont speak cantonese

how about just remain it as a little mystery

NP, I don't speak Cantonese and have only maybe a 100 word Mandarin vocabulary.

Lot's of mysteries involved in a foreign adoption one more, more or less, won't hurt us.

Originally posted by agallag
:If you could somehow get a recording of her singing it, I could get my girlfriend or her parents to give it a listen. I don't think the phonetics will do it.

Good idea. I'm working on it.

Originally posted by UtwigMU
... insert alegories of happy citizen doing his duty in socialist society

Very unlikely in Shenzhen.


@Mcollector:
There is a second part that she pronounces so fast that I couldn't even begin to put it on paper.
My only real hope was that it was a common children's song.
Barring that, it could be a TV ad, or even something she made up herself.


Thanks for the help everyone.
I'll give the recording a try.
Chuck

[cjolley]

On a side note.
And as an example of what learning Chinese by ear can do to you.

What is the difference between the Mandarin words for "rain" and "shark"?

They both sound like "shy you" to me.

Chuck

[Mcollector]

Re: Help with translation of Chinese kids song

Originally posted by cjolley

Can anyone tell me what this song is about?
This is transliterated from a 4 year old with a Mandarin/Cantonese/Oklahoma accent, so don't laugh please.

Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Chew dour batch ay ee (!?)
Ho Doh.... (uninteligable)

It seems to be some kind of song ChooChoo sang at her orphange.
Something to do with food in Hong Kong?

My sweetie looked at it and can't make anything out of it because it's too far off what would be legitimate Cantonese. She's says there's nothing like "batch" in Cantonese (she said something like "bak" or "pak" (unaspirated "K") when she was trying to read your transliterated form). She thinks "Ho Doh" might be something like "Good fortune" or "Good luck," but she's not sure.

[Mcollector]

Originally posted by cjolley
On a side note.
And as an example of what learning Chinese by ear can do to you.

What is the difference between the Mandarin words for "rain" and "shark"?

They both sound like "shy you" to me.

Probably the tone -- rising, falling, or even.
Same problem in Vietnamese. "Tu tu" means either "Wednesday" or "suicide," depending on the tonal pronunciation.

[cjolley]

Originally posted by Mcollector
Probably the tone -- rising, falling, or even.
Same problem in Vietnamese. "Tu tu" means either "Wednesday" or "suicide," depending on the tonal pronunciation.

Shouldn't it be "Monday" or "suicide"?
Chuck

PS Still working on getting a recording...

[cjolley]

Well, here is as much of it as I could get her to sing:

http://home.swbell.net/cjolley/HongKong.mp3

Plus one Bonus Song:

http://home.swbell.net/cjolley/Song2.mp3

Chuck

[J1NG]

Uh. Sounds more English than Chinese to me...

J1NG

[cjolley]

Originally posted by J1NG
Uh. Sounds more English than Chinese to me...

J1NG

The Bonus Song is English.

The first song is the original I was asking about.
I think it is in Mandarin.

I would have recorded her singing her "ABC"s.
But you would all have died of an overdose of cuteness.
And that would have made me feel guilty.
Chucki

[J1NG]

I think the first song was English too... It sounded that way to me. Don't listen for Chinese, but for English and it sounds just like what kids would utilise for a song that they've heard but don't actually no the words for.

I dunno, just my opinion. Now where's those ABC's...

J1NG

[cjolley]

Originally posted by J1NG
I think the first song was English too... It sounded that way to me. Don't listen for Chinese, but for English and it sounds just like what kids would utilise for a song that they've heard but don't actually no the words for.

I dunno, just my opinion. Now where's those ABC's...

J1NG

I suppose that, after our approval for her, the orphanage might have tried to teach her an English song.
But I got the impression that nobody there spoke any English when we visited the orphanage.
Chuck

PS Also, I recognize some of the Chinese words.
"Small" for example.


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