Ministry of Propaganda - 18/Jun/2005: "Languages"

Languages

Jason Kottke started a meme about how many languages people have in their music collection. Some people have quite impressive lists: 21 languages, 15 languages, 10 languages. I'm not into World Music, so I was wondering if I can compete and took a look at my CD collection. Here's what I found (sometimes stretching the definition of language ;-)):

American English: A number of the usual suspects, American rock, punk and pop music.
British English: Unfortunately a lot of British bands sing with an American twang, but at least some of it I would consider British English
A wee bit of Scots: You'll find the odd Scots word in a few songs by The Proclaimers
German: Apart from Sportfreunde Stiller I don't think there are any German bands singing in German in my collection (There are a few more German bands, but they sing in English). But quite a few of my classical music CDs are in German: Mahler, Schubert and Wagner to name a few.
Finnish: Sibelius.
Swedish: I've got a CD by the Swedish composer Lars-Erik Larsson: Förklädd Gud
Norwegian: Edvard Grieg: Peer Gynt
Italian: Some Verdi and Puccini
French: Some Stravinsky and the odd song in French (Ravel, Debussy)

I think that's it. Even stretching it I only get to nine. May be there's some Spanish hiding on one of my CDs? Or can I dig out something Russian?

Anyway, as we're on the topic of languages, let's stretch the meme to books. How many languages can I find in my bookshelves? Here we go:

English: Most of it.
Scots: Robbie Burns, a dictionary and the Luath Scots Language Learner
German: not as many as you might think, but I've kept a few books by German authors and some books I grew up with in Germany
Plattdeutsch (Low German): not much, but I've got some poems in Plattdeutsch
Gaelic: OK, this is stretching it a bit, but one of the dictionaries I have includes some Gaelic
Various other languages: Really stretching it now, I think there might be the odd sentence in a variety of languages in some of the books I have. Be it to illustrate something, be it as a quote.

Which languages have you got on your bookshelves?

End of entry

When writing this entry the weather was: sunny intervals
When writing this entry I was listening to: Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex (in French)
I'm currently reading/have just finished reading this book/publication: Before The Frost by Henning Mankell
I recently visited this website/-page: Bloglines
The last drink I had was/is: Bowmore 12yr single malt (together with some dark chocolate, really nice)

End of entry trivia

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