Languages

The language each record is sung or spoken in. English carries most of the archive, but the war was sung about in every language of the countries that took sides, sent troops, received refugees or marched against it; a record in two languages is listed under both. Choose a language to open the browse page filtered to it.

37 languages · 6,071 songs with words · 252 instrumental · 206 not yet assigned
All 37 languages, ranked ↓

All languages, ranked

37 languages · 6,071 songs with words

Every language in the archive, most records first, with the number of countries the records come from, the years they span, and the share of the sung and spoken records. Instrumentals are counted separately below.

# Language Countries · years Songs Share
1 English 33 countries · 1956–2026 4,715 77.7% 2 Vietnamese 13 countries · 1956–2024 545 9.0% 3 Spanish 15 countries · 1966–2020 211 3.5% 4 German 4 countries · 1965–2012 107 1.8% 5 Swedish 1 country · 1966–1993 87 1.4% 6 Japanese 1 country · 1964–1980 81 1.3% 7 Italian 2 countries · 1965–2022 80 1.3% 8 French 6 countries · 1967–2011 78 1.3% 9 Finnish 1 country · 1970–2009 32 0.53% 10 Chinese 1 country · 1964–1972 29 0.48% 11 Dutch 2 countries · 1966–1982 19 0.31% 12 Russian 1 country · 1965–2020 17 0.28% 13 Danish 1 country · 1970–1973 14 0.23% 14 Polish 2 countries · 1966–2024 11 0.18% 15 Portuguese 2 countries · 1967–2014 9 0.15% 16 Norwegian 1 country · 1972–1984 5 0.08% 17 Greek 2 countries · 1966–1982 4 0.07% 18 Czech 1 country · 1973–2021 3 0.05% 19 Croatian 2 countries · 1969–1977 2 0.03% 20 Japanese / Vietnamese 1 country · 1979 2 0.03% 21 Slovak 1 country · 1972 2 0.03% 22 Vietnamese / Russian 1 country · 1969 2 0.03% 23 Welsh 1 country · 1968–1970 2 0.03% 24 Albanian 1 country · 1966 1 0.02% 25 Bulgarian 1 country · 1977 1 0.02% 26 Catalan 1 country · 1967 1 0.02% 27 English / Māori 1 country · 2015 1 0.02% 28 English / Vietnamese 1 country 1 0.02% 29 Galician 1 country · 1968 1 0.02% 30 Korean 1 country · 2000 1 0.02% 31 Lao 1 country · 1963 1 0.02% 32 Menominee 1 country · 1997 1 0.02% 33 Sardinian 1 country · 2006 1 0.02% 34 Serbo-Croatian 1 country · 1988 1 0.02% 35 Slovenian 1 country · 1972 1 0.02% 36 Tamil 1 country · 1970 1 0.02% 37 Venetian 1 country · 1975 1 0.02%
Instrumentals

252 instrumental records have no words — marches, film cues, library music and the like — and are not counted in the shares above.