In a video I saw the other day, Bob Brozman, guitarist and singer, describes how he discovered making different sounds on his instrument by fooling around. He then went on to make the statement “In any language I’ve ever encountered, they say ‘…play music’, they don’t say ‘…work music’.”
It got me thinking, and so, I want to pose the following factual questions - what verbs are used in other languages to describe the action of making music on an instrument? And - in how many languages that Dopers know or know about does the same verb do multiple duty for musical instruments, games and what kids do with their free time?
English, of course - one plays piano, chess or with the kids next door.
In French, on joux… from the verb Jouer
Auf Deutsch, man spielt… from the verb Spielen
In Italiano, si giuoca… from the verb Giuocare
In Russian, ya igrayu na royalye… from the verb Igrayet.
Never jugar. Tocar. Tocar el piano, tocar la guitarra, tocar la flauta, tocar las palmas: play piano, play guitar, play the flute, clap.
You can clap with “hacer” as well, make (and in that case there’s no article, “hacer palmas”) or with dar, give (“dar palmadas” = give clapping sounds).
Irish is seinn, which I believe is ultimately cognate with Italian suonare and English sound. (You can sound horns in English, can’t you? Though you certainly don’t ordinarily “sound a banjo” or “sound a kazoo.”) Seinn also means “warble, twitter.” In Scottish Gaelic seinn is just sing, and if you want to play something you use cluich for either a game or an instrument.
In Breton the cognate word is soniñ (stem sen–) for instruments. For games it’s c’hoari.
Welsh uses chwarae, “play,” for both games and instruments, though you can say seinio for instruments, too.
Sanskrit: √vad (or abhi+ √vad): lit: “To cause to sound/speak” (with instr. of the instrument). I like that take on things - you cause your instrument to speak.
But not “play” as in “the children are playing in the street”, at least not nowadays. In medieval times we used the same word: leka. We can also say musicera, which is a verb in itself.
German also has the verb musizieren for ‘making music’. (And it’s probably more common to ‘make music’ (= Musik machen) than to play it; though you certainly play instruments.)
Tocar (to touch) is used for instruments: Você toca violão? (Do you play [acoustic] guitar?)
In contrast with Spanish, one does not say tocar [as] palmas; the most common phrase is bater palmas, which means to hit or strike the palms.
Children playing: brincar—Vai brincar com seu irmão (Go play with your brother.)
Playing a game: jogar—Vamos jogar futebol! (Let’s play soccer!).
Does one use ‘tocar’ for making music in general, without specifying an instrument? (¿Se dice “tocar musica”?)
As an aside, note that in English, you can make music as well as play music. This is actually important for instance when singing is involved, because you don’t play your voice, but you can make music with your voice.