 |
I see you haven't been active in the Mandarin Department recently. I have a song to share with you that can be sung to the tune "Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, Dormez Vous (twice), Sonnes les matines (repeat), Din din don (repeat)" Or in English, "Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John, Brother John, Morning Bells are ringing, Morning Bells are ringing, Ding Ding Dong, Ding Ding Dong.
Sange laohu, sange laohu (1,5 2,5)
Paode kuai, paode kuai (3,5 4)
Yige mei you weiba, yige mei you weiba (2,5 2 3 3,5)
Hen qiguai, hen qiguai
It translates differently than the tune which it can be sung to:
3 tigers, 3 tigers
Running fast, running fast
One has no tail, one has no tail
very strange, very strange
I read in your new, but not yet fully updated site that your (imaginary?) friend Fred has an imaginary unicorn.
There is a song by a Cuban singer, Silvio Rodriguez, about a unicorn, if you're interested:
Mi unicornio azul ayer se me perdio,
Pastando lo deje, y desaparecio.
Cualquier informacion bien la voy a pagar.
Las flores que dejo no me han querrido hablar.
Mi unicornio azul ayer se me perdio
No se si se me fue, no se si se extravio,
Y yo no tengo mas que un unicornio azul.
Si alguien sabe de el, le ruego informacion,
cien mil o un millon, yo pagare.
Mi unicornio azul se me ha perdido ayer, se fue.
Mi unicornio y yo hicimos amistad,
Un poco con amor, un poco con verdad.
Con su cuerno de anil pescaba una cancion,
Saberla compartir, era su vocacion.
Mi unicornio azul ayer se me perdio,
Y puede parecer acaso una obsesion,
Pero no tengo mas que un unicornio azul
Y aunque tuviera dos, yo solo quiero aquel.
Cualquier informacion la pagare.
Mi unicornio azul se me ha perdido ayer, se fue.
Yesterday, I lost my blue unicorn.
I left him grazing in the fields and he disappeared.
I'll pay handsomely for any lead.
The flowers he left behind will not tell me a thing.
Yesterday, I lost my blue unicorn.
I don't know if he ran away. I don't know if he went astray.
And I have but one blue unicorn.
If anyone knows where he is, I beg you to tell me.
I'll pay a hundred thousand, a million.
For I lost my blue unicorn yesterday. Now he's gone.
My unicorn and I became friends,
Partly through love, partly through honesty.
With his indigo horn he'd catch a song,
Knowing how to share it was his greatest joy.
Yesterday, I lost my blue unicorn.
It may seem like an obsession,
Yet I have but one blue unicorn.
And even if I had two, he's the one I love.
I'll pay handsomely for any lead.
For yesterday, I lost my blue unicorn. And now he's gone.
 It's frustrating not to be able to add accents and tildes to the Spanish, and inserting the tones to the Mandarin would be helpful. If you use the system where the first tone is even, the second goes uphill, the third goes down then up, and the fourth goes downhill (with a fifth considered neutral), I added those in parentheses. Of course, as with "Yige mei you weiba", you and wei both have tone #3, and in this case when two 3rd tones are placed together, the first instance of a third tone would be changed to 2nd tone, so the tones for this line would be (2,5 2,2 3,5)
 |  |
Please note that Not Panicking Ltd is not responsible for the content of any external sites listed. The content on h2g2 is created by h2g2's Researchers, who are members of the public. Unlike Edited Guide Entries, the content on this page has not necessarily been checked by a h2g2 editor. In the event that you consider anything on this page to be in breach of the site's House Rules, please
click here
.
|
