5;0 juerd@ouranos:~/tmp$ perl newyear.pl 
Backticks found where operator expected at (eval 1) line 1, near "pri`t "Happy `"
Bareword found where operator expected at (eval 1) line 1, near "`t "Happy `ew"
        (Missing operator before ew?)
5;0 juerd@ouranos:~/tmp$ perl -v | head -n2

This is perl, v5.8.0 built for i686-linux