Hey Fox!

Hey Fox! Posted by Ginny on Jun 30, 2011 in Korean Language

There is a very well known Korean children’s song that is called 여우야 여우야. The song title roughly translates to “Hey Fox, Hey Fox”.

It’s a cute little song about asking a fox what he’s doing. What the song does is teach children that the three basic motions that are essensial to carry on in life are sleeping, being hygienic and eating. The interesting part of the song is that there’s a line where they ask whether the frog is alive or dead. The frog is alive, which implies that the fox didn’t get to eat. My guess is that they didn’t want to scare the kids by talking about survival in the wild and predator/prey relations. Before I present the song I just want to point out that there will be a couple of lines in the song that have a phrase before the tilde (~). That’s the part of the responder to the original question. The phrase that comes after the tilde will be the commentary of the questioner. So for example the part that says 잠잔다, which is before the tilde, is the response to the question 여우야 여우야. The part that says 잠꾸러기 is the commentary of the questioner, which in this case happens to be “[you] sleepyhead”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkiyNn19CZk&feature=channel_video_title

여우야, 여우야 뭐하니 (yuhooya yuhooya mohani)