LTM ft. Richard Simcott

A most multilingual guest for the 50th episode!

Founder of the Polyglot Conference, a Bard of Cornwall, student and speaker of dozens of languages; thanks, Richard, for making the time for this chat.

Here's a tour of the tracks he recommended, language by language.

🇮🇸 Icelandic

Stjórnin's Ég er svo heit: a track with an interesting backstory, because it's actually an Icelandic cover of the Spanish song below.

Then there's Pál Óskar's Minn hinsti dans, Iceland's Eurovision entry!

🇪🇸 Spanish

The original behind that Icelandic cover? La Oreja de Van Gogh's El 28. There's something magical about hearing the same song in two languages and noticing how each one gives it a completely different colour and feel. This is exactly the kind of cross-linguistic connection that makes music such a powerful learning tool.

🇸🇪 Swedish

For Swedish, Richard turned to Lisa Ekdahl, one of Scandinavia's great jazz voices. Songs like Vem vet?, Öppna upp ditt fönster, and Benen i kors.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Welsh

Two recommendations here from Eden — Paid â bod ofn and Hen ferchetan, a remix of a traditional Welsh song that bridges the ancient and the modern. And for something a little different, Richard also pointed us toward Fleur de Lys (his favourite being Sbectol). Welsh has an extraordinary musical tradition, and is one of the most requested languages for Languages through Music! Full resource loading…

🇮🇹 Italian

A hall-of-fame trio here: Eros Ramazzotti: Più bella cosa non c'è, Nek, and Laura Pausini

🇩🇪 German

Pur is Richard’s recommendation here.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scottish Gaelic

Mànran’s Latha Math offer Gaelic grooves in a contemporary folk-rock context.

& Cornish

Gwenno. The Welsh-Cornish singer-songwriter has done something remarkable in building an entire artistic identity around two minority languages. Richard’s song suggestions map of Europe through its music, its minority languages, and some overlooked old-skool gems.

Thanks again, Richard!