Hong Kong English/Cantonese (XXII a)

Misheard Cantopop Lyrics (Again)

Oh I missed something?!

In response to Yun Fong’s comment on my article about misheard Cantopop lyrics, I think I must add this to the article, and so I add this separately here.

You can see the original here:

Camping?

This one isn’t an ordinary Cantopop song. It is the opening theme song for Japanese anime Digimon Tamers, but the song was slightly altered. At least the lyrics were rewritten into Chinese.

And it was “His Majesty the First Emperor of Ch’in” a.k.a. Raymond Lam who sang it.

So here’s the song.

Oh, this song was released as the anime was aired in Hong Kong in 2002. That was when I was P.5/P.6, but I don’t really remember this anime series, perhaps because I didn’t watch them.

Also, the only Digimon series I watched was Digimon Frontier where the characters took trains in the “digital world” to help rebuilding it. This was a great story and I watched it with one of my sisters.

And a line in the lyrics often get misheard, especially for grown-ups. The original line is:

要攻要守 不顫抖 路仍必須走

(Don’t tremble no matter if you choose to attack or defense. Life must go on.)

But the last phrase gets misheard so often because of homophones. 路仍必須走 (Life must go on) becomes:

露營必需酒

(Camping needs alcohol.)

It isn’t food this time, but beverage. Hongkongers are real foodies.

Mishearing this line seems to be a matter of how people separate the word/phrases, and it makes the song more fun.

It seems that we are also glad to have the country right next to the city. A lot of locals love to post this misheard lyrics on social media when they go camping, and of course they at least have a can of beer with them in the picture.

Sometimes when I scrolled over Facebook, I see some friends have posts like this. I’m not jealous as I don’t really like camping, but it really is like a “log out” from the busy metropolitan life in Hong Kong for a few hours.

Anyway, I hope I don’t miss any big ones again.