I love music. I really love music. I make it, listen to it, play it, study it - it's really the biggest part of my life. (Sorry, linguistics...) But I have a habit that some people call bad, and others call awesome: Loving music that's in languages I don't speak. It can be as almost understandable to me as a Romance/Germanic song, or as foreign as the Sámi national anthem. My tastes run all across the gambit, from Finnish death metal to Romanian folk music.
And guess how I first heard Finnish? Music. Hearing those songs kick-started my interest into this beautiful language. The same story with Hungarian later on.
A couple of people have asked me: Well, why don't you show us exactly what you listen to? (This is because they want to gawk at my bizarre tastes.) But, it got me thinking - maybe its good to spread the love of languages and music around? And at the same time, get attention for some great musicians/works.
So, from now on, every Wednesay and Sunday, I'll post a video of a song in language that is not English or Latin. Genres and styles will vary, to provide a bit of a taste for everything!
Note that this is called "Languages I Don't Speak", not "Languages I Don't Understand". I understand any number of songs that aren't English or Latin, for miscellaneous reasons - the language is so similar to ones I know that I can get it, I've seen English subtitles, or just plain context clues. But still, even if I can understand them, they have a charm that those super-familiar-language-songs just don't have.
You can send suggestions in, if you want to see one of your favorite songs displayed! Long live the music!
(Of course, if I'm gone, I won't be able to post. That should be expected.)
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