How to say “music” in 48 languages
Every one of these is a word that turns up in ordinary speech, not a dictionary curiosity — the number beside it is where it ranks in that language.
It is commonest in Tamil, where இசை is the 131st most used word.
- Afrikaans musiek #304
- Albanian muzikë #960
- Arabic موسيقى #970
- Basque musika #332
- Bengali সঙ্গীত music, song #1,805
- Bosnian muzika #1,483
- Bulgarian музика #817
- Catalan música #870
- Chinese 音樂 #1,810
- Croatian glazba #1,230
- Czech hudba #1,534
- Danish spiller music player #510
- Dutch muziek #794
- Esperanto muziko #471
- Estonian muusika #891
- Finnish musiikkia #1,737
- French musique #603
- Galician música #554
- German musik #291
- Greek μουσική the subject and art of music #710
- Hebrew מוזיקה #1,257
- Hindi संगीत #384
- Hungarian zene #1,527
- Indonesian musik #650
- Italian musica #663
- Korean 음악 #472
- Latvian mūzika #1,279
- Lithuanian muzika #781
- Macedonian музика #770
- Malay musik #1,756
- Malayalam സംഗീതം song, music #497
- Norwegian musikk #1,066
- Persian موسیقی #1,792
- Polish muzyka #1,807
- Portuguese música #614
- Romanian muzică #1,283
- Russian музыка #1,456
- Serbian muzika #1,446
- Slovak hudbu #772
- Slovenian glasba #591
- Spanish música #572
- Swedish musik #1,026
- Tamil இசை music, song #131
- Telugu లయ beating time in music and dancing #881
- Turkish müzik #668
- Ukrainian музика #1,218
- Urdu موسیقی #478
- Vietnamese nhạc #773
Knowing the word is the easy half.
Using it with someone who speaks the language is the half that sticks.