Friday 14 June 2013

Veëls geluk liewe maatjie…

Whenever someone on my Facebook list has a birthday, I write something on their wall:

"Veëls geluk liewe maatjie,
Omdat jy verjaar.
Mag die Here jou seën,
En nog baie jare spaar."

Time and again, and I would put it as high as 75%, people reply with a comment saying something like "What is that?" or "I don't understand :("

Come one people. It is not hard to find out what it means. I know this because I did it. I didn't even copy and paste the text into one of the well known and easy to ding translators. No, I just copied and pasted that straight into Google Search, and without even opening any of the links I already had 90% of the answer.

For what it’s worth, most translators do not support Afrikaans because nearly 100% of Afrikaans speaking people can also speak English fairly well. For that reason I include my translation as well as a video or two women singing the the song followed by the extended add-ons.

Happy Birthday dear friend (closest translation)
Because it’s your birthday.
May the Lord bless you
With many more years

Here is a clip of two girls singing the song. They do follow it up with other song that are traditionally done, but for our purposes we only need to listen to the first part

 

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