# How many languages in your music collection? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 8, 2004, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-languages-in-your-music-collection/278699 "2004-12-08T05:12:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2004, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-languages-in-your-music-collection/278699/41 "2004-12-10T13:02:09Z")
[QUOTE=Lisa-go-Blind] Oooh, I think I’m the first person to say [Welsh](http://www.gorkys.com/)! Whoops. :smack: I forget I have Charlotte Church’s first CD. Three songs about birds in Welsh. That’s another one. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2004, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-languages-in-your-music-collection/278699/42 "2004-12-10T16:30:54Z")
> [@Equipoise](#): > > I have everything everybody’s mentioned, except that I’m not sure about Provençal, Zulu, Xhosa, Haitian Creole, Swahili, Magyar, Malagasy and Tajik. But, I have SO many World Music CDs, and so many of them are compilations, I could have them and not even know. Magyar is Hungarian, so you’ve got that one covered. My collection: English Icelandic Polish Hungarian Russian Romani Slovenian Serbian Croatian German French Spanish Norweigian Swedish Finnish Turkish Japanese Arabic Farsi and a bunch of other languages I can’t identify ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2004, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-languages-in-your-music-collection/278699/43 "2004-12-10T16:51:22Z")
I also forgot my Flemish recording of Phantom of the Opera. I am really really gonna have to update that list. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2005, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-languages-in-your-music-collection/278699/44 "2005-01-24T02:01:01Z")
Hey, GREAT question! Let me go through my music collection now… hmm… Albanian Arabic Aramaic Bengali Breton Bulgarian Finnish French Galician Greek Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Hopi Hungarian Irish Italian Judeo-Spanish Kazakh Kyrgyz Latin Luo Macedonian Malagasy Mayan Navajo Oneida Panjabi Persian Portuguese Provençal Russian Sanskrit Spanish Swahili Telugu Turkish Urdu Uzbek Welsh Yoruba That makes 39 by my count. In addition, there are the nonlanguages Azam Ali-ese and Lisa Gerrard-ese. ---
**Author:** ![Daver914](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@Daver914](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daver914)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-languages-in-your-music-collection/278699/45 "2005-01-25T06:00:33Z")
[ul] [li]English[/li][li]Spanish[/li][li]Portuguese[/li][li]Hindi[/li][li]French[/li][li]Punjabi[/li][li]Urdu[/li][li]Yoruba[/li][li]Russian[/li][li]Colombian creole[/li][li]Mexican Spanish (Chilango dialect)[/li][li]Mandarin[/li][li]Arabic[/li][li]Latin[/li][li]Italian[/li][li]Swahili[/li][li]Japanese[/li][li]Shona[/li][li]Tolai[/li][li]Kannada[/li][li]and whatever language the African Rhythm Travellers sing in[/li][/ul] So… about twenty-one. ---
**Author:** ![Tentacle\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba9def/32.png) [@Tentacle\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tentacle_Monster)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-languages-in-your-music-collection/278699/46 "2005-01-25T06:22:45Z")
English, German, Japanese and Finnish. I feel lame. For those of you with Russian music: Are there any good Russian metal bands? I always thought Russian was the ideal heavy-metal language, second only to German. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2005, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-languages-in-your-music-collection/278699/47 "2005-01-25T06:46:34Z")
How much language does a song have to have to “count”? I mean, does “Living La Vida Loca” qualify for a Spanish tag? (Me? English, Japanese, Chinese, and Hawaiian, easily. Not sure about the others…) ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-languages-in-your-music-collection/278699/48 "2005-02-09T01:26:10Z")
I’d have to say easily over 100, probably in the 150 range; I travel internationally a lot and am huge into music, always buying cheap cassettes and old LPs evverywhere. I have the _Secret Museum of Mankind_ CDs, which probably accounts for 50 languages on its own. I suppose some of my more common off-beat languages in the collection would be Khmer, Vietnamese, Thai, Turkish, Newari , Faroese, Inuit and Quechua. ---
**Author:** ![Crandolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7cd45c/32.png) [@Crandolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crandolph)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-languages-in-your-music-collection/278699/49 "2005-02-09T01:29:42Z")
> [@Tentacle Monster](#): > > Are there any good Russian metal bands? I always thought Russian was the ideal heavy-metal language, second only to German. There are huge numbers of Russian metal and punk bands and many of them offer some free promo mp3 samples on their websites and Russian music forum sites. You should be able to Google that pretty easily. I’m partial to Naive, Sailors’ Silence and Grazhdanskaya Oborona. ---
**Author:** ![ddgryphon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8c91f0/32.png) [@ddgryphon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ddgryphon)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2005, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-languages-in-your-music-collection/278699/50 "2005-02-09T14:42:35Z")
Well, I have the standards: English, French, German, Irish Gaelic, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Finnish, Whatever they speak in Pakistan – I’ve never let not knowing what someone is singing in stop me from liking a good song – Arabic, Hindi, Japanese (Keiko Mitsume sings american standards in Japanese), Chinese. That’s all I remember off the top of my head, but international and world music’s availability on the internet has grown my collection beyond normal sounds. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-languages-in-your-music-collection/278699.md?page=2)