Happy Birthday, Joyeux Anniversaire, or Živijó?

Do you like the “Happy Birthday Song”? I can’t stand it. It’s one of those annoying little tunes that I can’t get out of my head once it’s in there, like mice in your house.

“For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow” is a really good English ditty. I think that is the proper English word for it. I liked the song especially in “Some Like It Hot” when a bunch of drunk Chicago gangsters smoking long cigars were singing it just before another gangster in white suit from the competition jumped with a machine gun out of a huge cake and started shooting everything in sight.

I am so grateful to Marilyn Monroe that she did not sing it in that movie! At least I don’t remember her singing it, although I sure remember “I Wanna Be Loved By You, Boo Boo Be Do” (how could I forget).

Unfortunately, the “Happy Birthday Song” is sung now in many countries on birthdays, usually in English, although sometime also in other languages. In Japan, they sing it in English, probably because you only need to know 5 (five) English words to be able to sing it in English, and 5 is the average number of English words that most Japanese people can handle.

In France they probably mostly sing it translated into French because I remember it from several French movies that way (Joyeux Anniversaire, Joyeux Anniversaire, Chère …..). You would probably need to remember only 3 French words to be able to sing it in French. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Every time when this stupid song has been sung to me in English (by my wife and kids), I felt really embarrassed. I am not quite sure why, but I think it must be because this damn song is so phony!

Especially when it is sung in English by people in foreign countries who don’t really speak English at all … I mean, I can’t think of anything more fake than that.

Why do they need to imitate Hollywood all the time? I found out that this stupid song is about a hundred years old, but I think that people in other countries learned it mostly because of the influence of Hollywood.

This song is now almost as popular as the word “cool”. I don’t have anything against young people using the word “cool” in French and in German, especially since the word sounds so different in French and German pronunciation. The “oo” sound is longer in French and the “l” sound is different. It is now a German word, written as “kool”, and it is a very  short “oo” in German.

I just don’t understand why these people keep singing that annoying “Happy Birthday Song”.

The Slavs (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenian,Croats, et al.) have their own happy birthday song, which is called “Živijó, Živijó”, and it goes like this: Živijó, živijó, živijó, živijó, živijó … mnoga ljeta, mnoga ljeta, ljeta, živijó!”.

This song can be used not only to for birthdays. You can sing it basically any time to show that you are happy to be alive and enjoying wine or your liquor. The words mean, I think, something like” “May we life a long life, long life, long life … many years, many years, long life”.

When I Googled it, I saw that there are two theories about the origin of this song. According to one theory, it is an old Slavic song (a Slavic ditty?) and it goes back to Old Slavonic, or the original Old Slavic language before the modern Slavic languages (Russian, Czech, Polish, Slovenian, Croatian, etc.) came into existence. I don’t think that this theory is based on reality, because that would mean that the song is more than a thousand years old.

According to another theory, this song is originally Slovenian or Croatian and it was brought to other Slavic countries after soldiers during World War I learned it in what would later become Yugoslavia.

Whether the words of this song are in Old Slavonic or Slovenian, the song is understandable to every Slav, from Poland and Russia to Slovenia and Bulgaria. That’s a lot of vodka and slivovice!

The last time when I sang this song, and you are only supposed to sing it only when you are raising a glass filled with vodka or slivovice, was probably in 1980.

I hope the Slavs are still singing the “Živijó” song and not imitating everybody else with that stupid “Happy Birthday To You” song, but I don’t really know whether this is still the case.

They too may be now showing off their knowledge of 5 English words, as they too are now infected by Hollywood like most people on this fake and phony planet.