Happy Friday!
Congratulations on almost getting to the weekend after a long work week. 😙
I just want to talk about something light-hearted today.
The other day, I went to a birthday party with my daughter.
The birthday girl has a French mother and Chinese father, so, when it came to singing the birthday song, the guests sang first in English, then in Chinese, and finally in French. 🎂
This reminded me of something fun to share with you.
Remember I mentioned in another email before that, when linguists notice similarities between different languages, they would ask whether those similarities are due to historical relatedness between the languages (as in, did those languages inherit the same characteristic from a common ancestor, which accounts for the modern similarities), whether they are due to borrowing (for example, a language borrowing a characteristic from another one in its development), or whether they are completely coincidental (as in, the languages just happened to develop that characteristic independently.)
Well, it seems that the greeting for “Happy Birthday” in different languages, many of which unrelated, happen to consist of the same number of syllables to fit neatly into the melody of the canonical birthday song. This is probably just a coincidental similarity given how widespread it is.
As with a lot of pop culture, the canonical birthday song is originally English (from the United States). The main melody consists of 6 different notes per line, fitting the English greeting “Happy Birthday to You.” 🎂
Interestingly, the birthday greeting in many other languages -- even ones that are completely unrelated to English, like Chinese -- happen to have the same number of syllables, six.
For example, the Chinese and French versions of the birthday songs we sang at the party also have six syllables per line:
祝你生日快樂 (Chinese)
Joyeux anniversaire (French)
Because of this, the canonical birthday song melody works very well with many languages.
It seems to me that even the languages that have standard “happy birthday” greetings that don’t fit into the melodic line neatly have “workarounds” that still allow the song to sound natural.
For example, the standard “happy birthday” greeting in German is:
Viel Glück zum Geburtstag
(roughly: Lots of luck and happiness for the birthday)
This greeting also contains six syllables, but the syllable/stress distribution happens to not fit the canonical English melody very well, so what the German speakers did was to move the adverb phrase “zum Geburtstag” to the front instead:
Zum Geburtstag viel Glück
(roughly: For the birthday, lots of luck and happiness)
This line then fits the canonical melody very well.
But, of course, for languages with standard birthday greetings that don’t work at all with the canonical melody, they’d use another greeting altogether, sometimes tailor-made for the song.
For example, the standard Italian greeting for “happy birthday” is “buon compleanno” -- but this phrase does not work with the melody, so they use another line that is often said to wish people good wishes on their birthday for the song instead:
Tanti auguri a te
(roughly: Many good wishes to you)
This line then works very nicely. (It still involves squeezing one more unstressed syllable into one of the notes, but this is actually very common with Italian songs, for example in the libretti of Italian opera, so it sounds very natural.)
It is just quite interesting to me that (seemingly) every language either has a standard greeting for “happy birthday” that fits the song as it is, or else has a neat solution for it. Haha.
This is probably the most translated song in the world?
Happy Friday!
恭喜你又過了一個漫長的工作週，差不多到週末了。😙
今天我只想說一點比較輕鬆的東西。
前幾天，我和女兒去了一個生日派對。
那位生日的小女孩有一位法國人媽媽和一位中國人爸爸，所以，到了唱生日歌的時候，賓客先用英文唱，然後用中文唱，最後再用法文唱。🎂
這令我想起一件挺有趣、想和你分享的事。
還記得我之前在另一封 email 提過，當語言學家注意到不同語言之間有相似之處時，他們會問：那些相似之處究竟是源於那些語言之間的歷史親緣關係（即那些語言是否從共同祖先繼承了同一個特徵，因而造成今天的相似之處）、還是源於借用（例如一種語言在其發展過程中借入了另一種語言的某個特徵）、還是根本純粹只是巧合（即那些語言只是剛好各自獨立發展出了那個特徵）。
那麼，看來不同語言中的「Happy Birthday」這句祝賀語——當中很多語言彼此其實沒有關係——剛好都有相同數目的音節，因此能夠整齊地放進生日歌的旋律裡。考慮到這個現象這樣普遍，這大概純粹只是一種巧合的相似。
跟很多 pop culture 一樣，我們叫「生日歌」的最通行版本本來是英文的（來自美國）。它每一行的主旋律由 6 個不同音符組成，剛好配合英文祝賀語 「Happy Birthday to You」。🎂
有趣的是，很多其他語言的生日祝賀——甚至包括一些和英文完全沒有關係的語言，例如中文——也剛好有同樣的音節數目：六個。
例如，那天在派對上我們唱的中文和法文版本生日歌，每一行也都有六個音節：
祝你生日快樂（中文）
Joyeux anniversaire（法文）
因此，這首生日歌的旋律和很多語言都配合得很好。
而在我看來，就連那些標準「happy birthday」祝賀語本身不能很整齊地放進那條旋律裡的語言，也似乎都有某些「變通方法」，仍然令這首歌聽起來自然。
例如，德文裡標準的「happy birthday」祝賀語是：
Viel Glück zum Geburtstag
（大概是：祝你生日有很多幸福和好運）
這句祝賀語其實也有六個音節，只是它的音節／重音分佈剛好不太配合那條通行的英文旋律，所以德文人士的做法是，改為把副詞組 「zum Geburtstag」 移到前面：
Zum Geburtstag viel Glück
這樣一來，這一句就和通行旋律非常配合。
但當然，對於那些標準生日祝賀語本身根本完全不能配合那條 旋律的語言，它們便會乾脆用另一句祝賀語，有時甚至是專門為這首歌而設的。
例如，意大利文裡標準的祝賀語是 「buon compleanno」——但這個詞組並不能配合那條旋律，所以他們唱歌時會改用另一句本來也常用來祝別人生日快樂的說話：
Tanti auguri a te
（大概是：送你很多美好的祝願）
這一句就配合得很好（雖然它仍然涉及把多一個非重音音節塞進其中一個音裡，但這在意大利歌中，如歌劇歌詞中，本身很常見，所以很自然）。
我只是覺得挺有趣：看起來，幾乎每一種語言不是本身就有一句標準的「happy birthday」祝賀語剛好配合這首歌，就是另外有一個很好的解決方法。Haha.
這大概是全世界有最多語言版本的一首歌吧？