Why do students think Old Mac Donald is so funny especially when it comes to “And on this farm he had a horse”?
I’m mystified by that sort of thing myself. For example, last Christmas my kindy kids all cracked up–I mean serious, loud, sustained laughter, falling out of their chairs, etc.–at the first line of the Whitney Houston version of “The Christmas Song,” “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. . . .” When the laughter died down they would repeat a semblance of the first two words, but they made some kind of nonsense phrase out of it that was neither Chinese nor English (I’m pretty sure it was nonsense because they once said the phrase in the presence of a Taiwanese, and she couldn’t make any sense of it).
In another kindy class, the kids would completely crack up during a chant called “Knock knock,” whenever I said the last line, “How do you do, Mr. Chinny-Chin-Chin?” Maybe they laughed because I’m an old guy and I acted out the chant by stroking my chin (which resembles the sign for an old man). But I never really could figure out why they thought it was so funny, and neither could the Taiwanese teacher.
Now, if I could get a nice, big collection of songs and chants that made kids laugh like that and could put a few of them in every class session, I guess I’d become a famous kindy/buxiban teacher. 
[quote]Why do students think Old Mac Donald is so funny especially when it comes to “And on this farm he had a horse”?[/quote]I’m tipping because like a lot of Taiwanese kids on this Island, they probably weren’t pronouncing the ending S sound in horse, therefore finding it pretty damn funny that Dirty Old Macca was storing a whore in the henhouse.
It is amusing to hear a horse saying ‘breasts’ in Chinese. That’s what I was told by my shocked and horrified co-teacher when I sat in class going “With a neigh-neigh here…”
[quote]It is amusing to hear a horse saying ‘breasts’ in Chinese. That’s what I was told by my shocked and horrified co-teacher when I sat in class going “With a neigh-neigh here…”
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Exactly!
“neigh-neigh” = “nei nei” = “titties” (titties here, titties there, here a tittie, there are tittie, everywhere some titties )
You’ll have a similar reponse with the ‘Apples and Bananas’ song with the verse for ‘a’.
“I like to ate, ate, ate
Ay-pples and ba-nay-nays”
Brian
Try saying “cartoon” or “carton” - ah ha ha bottom, that kills me.
Or “gun” - ah ha ha ha SHOCK - the teacher said #@$@#.
found a peanut song …
found a peanut -> fang pei, or fang-a pei-a (fart)
i had to stop teaching this to some classes, and in others, it never came up.
You all have vunenile child minds, next you’ll be saying that that Doggy Poo cartoon sounds rude 
My kids love the story of the 3 little pigs, especially when I say “Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!” They just about bust a gut laughing. Maybe this is because it sounds like “Qin-qin”, or the way kids say “kiss” in Mandarin.
During the hilarity-provoking “Christmas Song” practice, after the gales of laughter would die down, one of the kids would sing, “Chestnuts ranshing,” and the laughter would start up again. Maybe it’s this(?)(from babelfish):
髯 猩 ran2 xing1 “fine-beard ape”
“Chestnuts fine-beard ape.”
One of my kids once asked me who Dingle Jay was, as in “Dingle Jay my sunshine away.”