Interesting Facts About the National Anthems and Languages

A national Anthem is a song that officially represents a country. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a national anthem is “a song that praises a particular country and that is officially accepted as the country’s song” 

Because is the song that represents a country, it is normally sung in its language. But what happen when the country deals with more than one language? Different solutions are applied, and this leads to interesting situations between national anthems and languages. Here are some: (For each anthem I provide a link so you can listen to it).

1.- The most multilingual national anthem belongs to South Africa. The lyrics combines verses in 5 languages. The first stanza has the first 2 verses in Xhosa and the following 2 in Zulu. The second stanza is sung in Sesotho language, then the third is in Afrikaans and the last one is in English. It was adopted in 1997 and combines 2 songs, Die Stem van Suid-Afrika (The call of South Africa in Afrikaans), a poem that was the previous national anthem since 1957 till 1997, and Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika (God Bless Africa in Xhosa), a popular church hymn that was later adopted as a political hymn and then versions in other languages were added, becoming also a national anthem in 1994. 

2.- It is not easy to get an answer if we ask which is the most translated national anthem. But it is likely that this distinction belongs to “O Canada’, the national-anthem of Canada. During my research, I found versions in at least 30 languages, including English and French, which are the official languages. I leave here a link to the bilingual version. The Canadian national anthem was composed in 1880 by Calixa Lavallée and the lyrics were originally written in French by Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier. The original English version was written by the Honorable Robert Stanley Weir. On July 1^st 1980 It was proclaimed Canada’s National Anthem. Different translations of the anthem started to appear and some of them were chosen to be performed mostly during sport events. Today, we can find versions of “O Canada” in Indigenous languages such as Cree, Inuktitut, Ojibwe, Mikmaq, Inuinnaqtun, Dene, Dakota, Mohawk, and in languages brought by immigration like Ukrainian, Mandarin, Italian, German, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, Persian, Cantonese, Punjabi, Tagalog and Yiddish. In the page of  Cadvision you can find at least 20 versions.

3.- The most translated national anthem for official purposes belongs to Switzerland. It can be used in all the 4 official languages of this country: German, French, Italian and Romansh. The Swiss Psalm (Schweizerpsalm in German, Cantique Suisse in French, Salmo Svizzero in Italian and Psalm Svizzer in Romansh) is a poem that was originally composed in German by Leonhard Widmer, a journalist and songwriter from Zürich. It was adopted as a provisional national anthem in 1961 and officially declared the country’s national anthem in 1981. 

4.- Some countries may decide not to use any language at all, this means, no lyrics. A famous multilingual country that elected this option is Spain. “La Marcha Real” (in Spanish: the Royal March) is one of 4 national anthems that do not have lyrics. It was adopted in 1770 being the third oldest national anthem in the world (After Netherlands and the UK). It is also known as “La Marcha de Granaderos” (The Grenadier March in Spanish). Lyrics were previously used, but there were some disputes during the 20^th century regarding the relation of it with the monarchy and later with the dictatorship of Franco. The lyrics were abandoned and since 1978 it is played without them. There were unsuccessful attempts to adopt new lyrics. Due to the existent problems with different separatist groups, it may not be now the best moment to approve new lyrics. The other countries that do not use lyrics in their anthems are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and San Marino.

5.- When Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918, they took a verse from a Czech song and another one from a Slovak song and they adopted this combination as their National anthem. The first verse came from the Czech song “Kde domov můj” (Where my home is ) that was composed for a comedy play and soon became popular among Czechs. The second verse came with a different melody from the popular Slovak song “ Nad Tatrou sa blýska “ (Lightning over the Tatras). In 1993, Czechoslovakia ceased to exist, Czechs and Slovaks split and they took their respective parts of the national anthem with them and adopted it as their respective national anthem. This is the closest thing to a divorce that I have seen in diplomacy. 

6.- India adopted a National anthem written in a language that is not one of the 2 who are official. The song “Jana Gana Mana” (জনগণমন = Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people) was written in Bengali by poet and writer Rabindranath Tagore in 1911 and declared national anthem in 1950. There are some special characteristics about this poem. It was written by a Nobel prize laureate and it reflects the concept of “Unity in Diversity”, that is important for this country. Linguistically, it was written in a Sanskritized version of Bengali, called “Sadhu Bhasha”. The words used are common in most Indian languages, with small differences in the pronunciation so anyone in India can understand this song without translate it. In Hindi, which is one of India’s official languages, the title of the song is जन गण मन​ which also reads “Jana Gana Mana” and the lyrics in Hindi are identical to the original in Bengali. You can see an example in Wikipedia. 

7.- Dead languages have been used as well. The Pontifical Anthem or Inno Pontificio serves as the national anthem of the Vatican City. It was composed by Charles Gounod in 1869 and adopted as the anthem in 1949. The original lyrics, written by Mons Antonio Allegra, were in Italian but in 1991, new official lyrics in Latin, written by Mons Raffaello Lavagna, were added.  The idea of the new lyrics was that everybody could sing this anthem regardless of their country of origin, being Latin the language of the Holy See and the language of no country, although today, it is often sung in Italian. There was a previous hymn and its lyrics were in Latin.

8.- Perhaps the independent country with the least understood national anthem, because of the language, is Nauru. Nauru Bwiema (Nauru, Our Homeland) is written in Nauruan language and it was adopted as national anthem in 1968. Nauru is a small island with only 21 km² and a population of less than 11,000 inhabitants. It is estimated that less than 6000 are native speakers of this language (probably around 1000 are L2 speakers).