Today's new word

jia you expression analogous to our "Let's Go!" encouraging cheer-thing (pronounced ja yo)

This morning Myles and I went to a playground very near our house that until recently we were unaware of its existence. We were equipped for some great bang qiu action. Sometimes Myles was Jason Bay, sometimes he was Freddy Sanchez (and would only answer to Freddy Sanchez). We ran into two American brothers we knew who were with their Ayi, so we invited them to play ball with us. As we were taking turns with the two (lian ge) bang qiu shou tao and the bang qiu bang, I wanted to cheer the boys on with a Chinese cheer-chant my friend Katie had taught me. Unfortunately, I could only remember the English literal translation, which is "add oil." Fortunately, their ayi was able to tell me what it was after some description of it. Like many idioms in any language, the native speaker laughs hysterically when you point out the literal meaning. Also like many idioms in any language, the average speaker cannot explain to you why "add oil" is as encouraging a cheer as "Let's go!"
But chant we did, "Jia you! Jia you!" for each of the boys until it got too hot to play any longer.
Almost like home and obviously not.