Mexican version of "I Like to Eat Apples and Bananas" song discovered by Rivas Cultural Services
Posted by paulrivas on:
Everyone knows the song "I Like to Eat Apples and Bananas". It's the
one American kids are made to sing by substituting all the vowel sounds
in the song for the long vowels a, e, i, o and u. So the words become
"Ae lake tae ate, ate, ate, aepples aend baenaenaes", "E leke tee eet,
eet, eet, eeples eend beeneenees", "I like ti ite, ite, ite, ite, iples
eind byenyenyes", etc. It doesn't really make any sense at all when
transcribed, because it's hard to spell the long vowel sounds that the
song uses, but you get the point.
As a preschooler at the famous Starr-King Parent Child Workshop, Rivas
Cultural Services was made to sing this song a great deal. In those
days, the restaurant in the space that Aldo's currently occupies on
State Street was not a shamelessly overpriced Italian joint with a
sycophantic waitstaff, but a historic cafeteria that made everything
from scratch, called The Copper Coffee Pot. Today, there is a ceramic
tile plaque on the wall outside Aldo's commemorating this.
My dad worked at The Copper Coffee Pot as a cook. His nickname in the
kitchen was "McGovern", because he was always talking about the
candidate. The youngest guy who worked there was an undefeated wrestler
at Dos Pueblos High whose nickname was "El Undefeated". The boss
was a guy named Lance, about whose balding pate the kitchen staff used
to say, "pocos pelos, pero bien peinados", meaning "few hairs,
but well combed". Whenever a fly was found to be hanging out on a wall
- my dad told me before my first Spanish class at La Colina Junior High
- someone would sing the words, "una mosca está en la pared", meaning "a fly is on the wall".
Well, Saturday morning, Rivas Cultural Services was driving to work and
listening to the children's program Festival Infantil on Radio Bronco,
when a song came on called, "Una mosca parada en la pared", or
"A fly on the wall". Obvi, the first verse was, "Ana masca parada an
la parad, an la parad, an la parad. Ana masca, ana masca, ana masca
parada an la parad." Next came, "Ene mesque perede en le pered,"
and then "Ini misqui piridi in li pirid," etc.
All of which brought to light the following discoveries:
1. The Mexican version of "Apples and Bananas" is called, "A Fly on the
Wall" in Spanish.
2. My dad misremembered the title of the song, and for 40 years has
been saying "está"
instead of "parada".
3. The Spanish language version also requires several spelling changes
in order to write the lyrics properly, but these are much easier to
make in Spanish, because since all Spanish vowels have only one
pronunciation (namely, the name of the vowel), it's the consonants that
become affected in spelling.
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1 Comment
Comment by Alyssa on
I think that this song is very encouraging For little kids to learn their vowels in English my little cousin listened to this Song like last year and now I still cannot Get it out of my head it is a very cure song also