Languages in Music

[Smitty]

Note: I did a quick search and I did not find a topic like what I've made. If there is one, sorry.

Musical tastes says a lot about a person, so what languages are in your music collection? Is it limited to the languages you know or study, or do you listen to some music that you can't at all comprehend? There's also the universal language of instrumental music, but that doesn't really count.

My collection at the moment is probably:
65% English
25% Japanese
10% Korean
Traces of Hindi, Portuguese and French

[Monsieur-Kiwi]

For me, it isn't only the music in a song that is important, but the words and what they mean. I like to read into the lyrics and see the symbolism and language features that enrich the songs and make them true works of art. For this reason, I only listen to music in English and French because those are the only two languages I can understand well enough to get the meaning of the lyrics. Instrumental music is okay, but I prefer to listen to songs with words in them.

Sometimes it's interesting to listen to songs that you don't understand, just to hear how the words sound, but I'd rather be able to understand it.

[Levo]

English, Hungarian (Surprise, surprise...)

Finnish
Swedish
Estonian
Italian - I don't learn this one
Czech - This one either
Polish - Only for a short time
And I lost my beautiful Chinese song!!! Guess what, by some reason I don't even know what its title is Those krix-krax signs don't appear on my computer.
Oh, there was one in Tibetian, and I lost that one too

But on youtube I listen to some Kazakh songs too every now and then.

[Meera]

I listen to Hini, Persian, Arabic, Tamil, Punjabi,Pashto, Bengali etc.

[Qoppa]

A good portion of what I listen to isn't in English. Of what's not in English, it's probably ranked something like:
1) Finnish
2) Swedish
3) Everything else, including Russian, German, Norwegian, and a bunch more.

I love music in languages I don't understand. Oftentimes I'll listen music simply because it's not in English, even if the music itself is terrible.

[ILuvEire]

A good portion of what I listen to isn't in English. Of what's not in English, it's probably ranked something like:
1) Finnish
2) Swedish
3) Everything else, including Russian, German, Norwegian, and a bunch more.

I love music in languages I don't understand. Oftentimes I'll listen music simply because it's not in English, even if the music itself is terrible.

Haha, I agree. It doesn't matter how bad the music is, I'll still listen to it!

Me:
1) English
2) French (Don't learn it, although I have a passive understanding of spoken French)
3) Finnish (It sounds so pretty! I don't understand it, but I love to hear it)
4) German (Good rap music)
5) Vietnamese (Not too much good music, but it sounds nice)
6) Italian

[CoBB]

The two main languages in my collection are Finnish and Russian, and I also have quite a few songs in other related languages: Saami, Estonian and Livonian from the FU branch, and almost every major language in the Slavic group (especially Polish and Ukrainian). English claims the third big slice of the pie. As for the rest, I also have some French, Italian, German, Norwegian, Persian, Basque, Lithuanian and of course Hungarian too, and maybe a few others I can’t remember right now.

Az én gyűjteményemben a finn és az orosz a két fő nyelv, és jópár dalom van a hozzájuk kapcsolódó nyelveken is: számi, észt és lív a FU ágból, és szinte minden főbb nyelv a szláv csoportból (különösen lengyel és ukrán). Az angolé a torta harmadik nagy szelete. Ami a többit illeti, van még francia, olasz, német, norvég, perzsa, baszk, litván és persze magyar is, és talán még egy pár, ami most nem jut az eszembe.

[Lietmotiv]

Most of the songs in my collection are in English.
I grew up with Russian music (especially rock)which is still the most popular in Moldova so Russian is the 2nd.I also listen to Romanian and Moldavian music(meaning music in Romanian) but I also listen to many songs in French.
I don't listen to music in other languages because I don't understand other languages.

[Lada]

For me, it isn't only the music in a song that is important, but the words and what they mean. I like to read into the lyrics and see the symbolism and language features that enrich the songs and make them true works of art.

that's absolutely true for me as well. In my list of arts, song is on the top because it's a real genuine work to combine music and lyrics into one unique thing where they can't be separated and can live only together, it's amazing, all I can say

Lyrics is VERY important for me, but not always. There are true masterpieces which are for "soul" and some gibberish stuff for dancing or to "make some noise" for the atmosphere.

So for the soul I listen to the music in Russian only with little exception in English and in French. And it's all Rock music only. Guys in Russian rock are real poets, it's a fact recognized even in Kremlin Unfortunately I've found few groups in foreign languages where I like both lyrics and music, in most cases English speaking groups sing something senceless...

For making noise I listen to music in ANY foreign language, but it must be rock of course So I have music in Czech, French, English, Norwegian, Spanish, German, Bulgarian, Finnish, etc.

[linguaholic]

Most of the CDs I own are in English. In English, I care most about the music and good lyrics are a nice addition. I also have quite some German music, where I find the lyrics more important, I like listening to it because I can understand the lyrics on a deeper level.
Then there are some Dutch CDs. Mainly Blof, who kind of made me take up Dutch. Not because the music is that amazing (it's nice), but because the feeling that I should be able to understand it (because of its similarities to German) drove me nuts. And because it sounded nice.
Whenever I listen to Krystof (Czech band) I really wish I had the time to learn Czech right now. I don't get most of the lyrics, though I asked a Czech friend of mine to translate some.
I sometimes like watching ASL song translations on YouTube, even if I only pick up the odd sign here and there. And I also like listening to Esperanto music online, the lyrics can be quite poetic and it's nice to see that I can already pick up quite a bit of it after a short time of studying the language.

[Mongol]

My collection is entirely classical, but I have many operas, oratorios, cantatas, and art songs in Italian, French, German, Russian, Czech, Hungarian, Latin, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Polish etc. Almost all of these come with booklets with the texts in the original languge plus an English translation next to it. I also have many settings of the Latin mass and other musico/liturgical works by different composers.
As I said previously, these English translations helped me gain familarity with basic languages such as Italian, French and German, which helped to gain familiarity with related languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch etc, plus Russian and the other Slavic languages. I have been doing this since I was a teenager, and this is no doubt what inspired my interest in languages and linguistics.
I do have one very interesting CD of traditional Georgian folk songs for men's choir by the Rustavi choir on Sony Classical. Unfortunately, there are no translations, but the liner notes explain much.

[TaylorS]

As a rough estimate I'd say:

75% English
15% Spanish
5% French
5% Other

[Ilayde]

I used to be a crazy fan of Japanese music when I was in junior high. I really liked the sound of the Japanese language back then, and memorized lots of lyrics that I didn't understand at all... Now it's all gone, and Japanese irritates me a bit, actually.

I noticed I, too, most enjoy listening to music in a language that I don't understand ;p So I don't listen to Polish music at all, and the same applies to English. Actually, I've been listening to tons of Spanish music in the last few years, practically exclusively some time ago, and it was the music (discovered accidentally) that made me want to learn Spanish...
I also enjoy songs in Greek very much, and am a big fan of Eleni Tsaligopoulou. It's the same as with English - I heard one song by accident and a week later I was browsing a Greek textbook...

[Diogenes]

My listening is divided about 50-50 between classical and everything else. Of my "everything else" collection most of it is in English, but I also love listening to music in languages I don't understand! I have music in:

Vietnamese
Norwegian
Swedish
Latin
Irish
Greek
Latvian
Russian
French
Mongolian
and some African languages I can't identify

[ILuvEire]

You know what? I think Xhosa music would be beautiful.

[Alejo]

I used to be a crazy fan of Japanese music when I was in junior high. I really liked the sound of the Japanese language back then, and memorized lots of lyrics that I didn't understand at all... Now it's all gone, and Japanese irritates me a bit, actually.

I understand completely.

[Gormur]

I have a lot of folk and world music besides classical, rock, metal, and jazz... I don't know about percentages, but it goes in order like this --

English (rock, metal, jazz)
Norwegian (folk music)
Icelandic (art rock, pop rock)
Brazilian Portuguese (bossa nova)
Spanish (Flamenco & Castillian music)
Japanese (Kabuki, indie)

[jaybee]

Right now, my library is mostly constructed of English (90%) and French songs.. though, it's slowly expanding into other languages.
For me, it doesn't necessarily matter whether or not I understand the lyrics. I don't really pay attention to what's being said, even in English. All I look for is how it overall sounds.

[Strigo]

40% English
40% Hebrew
15% Spanish
5% Others

[Alejo]

Well, I'd say 90% of my music is in English, and the rest is in either Spanish, French, Portuguese, or Hebrew(Which is basically just Monika Sex songs).
I think I have about four in Russian and quite a few in German. I know there's definitely one song in Finnish...
A couple of Armenian songs...
Yeah, thats it .