The languages I know and how it helped me navigate melodeon/diatonic accordion videos

This is a somewhat random post, but yesterday I read a post in Spanish and responded. The diatonic accordion is wildly popular in Latin America (as well as the piano accordion). They like the three row accordions and they like it tuned wet. Probably my least favorite combo, but that is for "me" to play, Ms. East-Coast-Suburban-Urban-White-Woman-Raised-in-Iowa. If I were in Mexico or at a Mexican festival, I would love it as it's taking in the culture.

Anyway, it made me realize, I have been able to follow and understand a lot of posts. I'm a native English speaker, obviously. I have an undergrad degree in Spanish (my Masters is in Educational Administration). I married an immigrant from Croatia and we raised our children hearing both English and Croatian. Our oldest son is fully bilingual (in speaking) and our younger son (and myself) mostly understand it, but respond in English. When we visit Croatia I can get by - ordering food, going to the market, asking for help, etc, but I wouldn't consider myself even conversant... just could survive and listen a lot and nod! :-) That artwork at the top? Says 7th Croatian Competition for Accordion.

So, it happens that a lot of posts about diatonic accordions are in English (because of the UK), Spanish, and Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian - all which are understandable to me. Because written French and Italian are somewhat kind of similar enough to Spanish, I can pick out some of that too. The one regular language I cannot decipher much unless they are crossover words in English is German. Of course, what is my dominant cultural heritage? German. GO figure it's the language I can't decipher without help from Google translate.

Accordion music, though, has been popular all over the place. Here's a great video sharing some of that history:

In other news got a good night of sleep and my cold symptoms are lessening (though my son has it now), so hopefully I can get in a good practice today. I might delve into some of the new material that has been sent to me too. We'll see how today goes.