Spoken languages and their first appearance
Spoken languages are fully counted below when they are used in at least an entire verse or chorus of a song. First brief uses of a language and first uses of dialects are also noted.
The following list is of languages used in the Eurovision Song Contest since its inception in 1956, including songs (as) performed in finals and, since 2004, semi-finals.
The rules concerning the language of the entries have been changed several times. In the past, the contest's organisers have sometimes compelled countries to only sing in their own national languages, but since 1999 no such restriction has existed.
From 1956 until 1965, there was no rule restricting the language(s) in which the songs could be sung. For example, in the 1965 contest, Sweden's Ingvar Wixell sang his song in English. After this, a rule was imposed that a song must be performed in one of the official languages of the country participating. This new language policy remained in place until 1973.
From 1973 to 1976 inclusive, participants were allowed to enter songs in any language. Several winners took advantage of this, with songs in English by countries where other languages are spoken, this included ABBA's "Waterloo" in 1974 for Sweden and Teach-In's "Ding-a-dong" for the Netherlands in 1975. [1]
In 1977, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the contest organisers, reimposed the national language restriction. However, Germany and Belgium were given a special dispensation to use English, as their national song selection procedures were already too advanced to change. During the language rule, the only countries which were allowed to sing in English were Ireland, Malta and the United Kingdom as English is an official language in those countries. The restriction was imposed from 1977 to 1998.
From 1999 onwards, a free choice of language was again allowed. Since then, several countries have chosen songs that mixed languages, often English and their national language. Prior to that, songs such as Croatia's "Don't Ever Cry" (1993), Austria's "One Step" and Bosnia and Herzegovina's "Goodbye" (1997) had a title and one line of the song in a non-native language. In 1994, Poland caused a scandal when Edyta Górniak broke the rules by singing her song in English during the dress rehearsal [2] [3] (which is shown to the juries who selected the winner). Only six countries demanded that Poland should be disqualified, and with the rules requiring at least 13 countries to complain, the proposed removal did not occur. [4]
Since 2000, some songs have used constructed languages (conlangs): the Belgian entries in 2003 ("Sanomi") and 2008 ("O Julissi") were entirely in constructed languages. In 2006, the Dutch entry "Amambanda" was sung partly in English and partly in a conlang.
The entry which used the most languages was "It's Just a Game", which represented Norway in 1973. It was performed in English and French, with some lyrics in Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German, Irish, Serbo-Croatian, Hebrew, Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian. In 2012, Bulgaria was represented by the song "Love Unlimited", which mainly had lyrics in Bulgarian, but with phrases in Turkish, Greek, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, French, Romani, Italian, Azerbaijani, Arabic and English. The 1969 Yugoslav entry "Pozdrav svijetu" was mainly sung in Croatian, but also had phrases in Spanish, German, French, English, Dutch, Italian, Russian and Finnish.
As of 2024, [update] the only country that has never entered a song completely in one or more of its national languages is Azerbaijan, which has never entered a song fully in the Azerbaijani language (although the aforementioned "Love Unlimited" contained a line in the language, the 2021 Azerbaijani entry "Mata Hari" contained a repeated phrase in the language, and the chorus of the 2024 Azerbaijani entry " Özünlə apar " is in Azerbaijani). Monaco has never used Monégasque, its traditional national language, but French is Monaco's official and most commonly spoken language, and all of Monaco's entries have been entirely or primarily in French.
On the other hand, as of 2024, [update] there are only ten countries whose representatives have performed all their songs at least partially in an official, regional or national language: Andorra, Australia, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, France, Morocco and the United Kingdom. In addition, former countries Serbia and Montenegro and Yugoslavia, and current countries Ireland, Malta and the United Kingdom, have only been represented by songs fully in an official language.
The only editions not to feature any English-language entries were 1956 and 1958, while 2022 was the first time in the history of the event that no entry was performed in French – with the two being the official languages of the contest. In 1956 and 1958 no anglophone country participated whereas in 2022 the three francophone participants entered songs in English (Belgium and Switzerland) and Breton (France) respectively. While non-francophone countries have in the past sent entries wholly or partially in French, none did so in 2022.
French legislator François-Michel Gonnot criticised broadcaster France Télévisions and launched an official complaint in the French Parliament, as the song which represented France in 2008, "Divine" by Sébastien Tellier, was sung in English. [5] A similar incident occurred again in 2014, when Ruth Lorenzo was criticised by the Royal Spanish Academy after winning the Spanish national selection with her song "Dancing in the Rain", which contained some lyrics in English.
The following natural languages have appeared in at least one competing entry in the Eurovision Song Contest:
Most Europeans speak one or several Indo-European languages as a first language, second language or both. Of the main branches of Indo-European, Germanic and Romance have been represented at every ESC. Balto-Slavic languages, another branch of Indo-European with hundreds of millions of speakers, were first introduced to the contest by Yugoslavia and have become more common after the end of the Cold War as more and more countries with a Slavic national language participated. The Baltic subgroup of Baltoslavic has only sporadically appeared as these languages have few speakers outside Lithuania and Latvia. Smaller branches such as Hellenic languages, Albanoid, Celtic languages (including Breton and Irish), Armenian languages and others have likewise depended on whether the national broadcaster representing that language participates and selects an entry in that language. For example despite Irish being de jure a co-official national language in Ireland, there has been only one Irish-language entry, but two in Breton, a language that has been actively fought against by the French state in the 20th century. While the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European includes some of the most spoken languages in the world, few people in EBU member states speak one of those languages and thus their presence at Eurovision thus far has been minimal.
Non-Indo-European languages have been appearing since the 1960s. The first group to appear were the Uralic languages which include Sami, Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian. In the 1970s Semitic languages (of the wider Afroasiatic family) which have been represented by the Maltese language, Hebrew and various varieties of Arabic first appeared in the contest. The Turkic languages have mostly been represented by Turkey (Azeri which is also a Turkic language has only been used for a few lines in a few songs thus far). As Turkey hasn't participated since 2012, the representation of Turkic languages has decreased.
Besides those languages that have notable communities of native speakers in EBU member states, there have been conlangs (languages "made up" by identifiable individuals or groups of individuals in recent times – some of the entries used a conlang devised specifically for that song bordering on glossolalia), languages from outside the EBU area as well as "dead" classical languages such as Ancient Greek, Sanskrit or Classical Latin used for songs, their titles or parts of their lyrics.
Spoken languages are fully counted below when they are used in at least an entire verse or chorus of a song. First brief uses of a language and first uses of dialects are also noted.
Between 1966 and 1972, and again between 1977 and 1998, countries were only permitted to perform in a official, national or regional language of their country. Since language restrictions were last lifted in 1999, only four songs in non-English languages have won: Serbia's "Molitva" in 2007 (Serbian), Portugal's "Amar pelos dois" in 2017 (Portuguese), Italy's "Zitti e buoni" in 2021 (Italian) and Ukraine's "Stefania" in 2022 (Ukrainian). Also, Ukraine's winning entries in 2004 and 2016 combined lyrics in English with Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar, respectively.
In 2017, "Amar pelos dois" became the first Portuguese-language song to win the contest, the first winner since 2007 to both be in a language that had never produced a winning song before and be entirely in a language other than English. Among all Eurovision winning entries, only Ukraine's were performed in more than one language.
2021 was the first year since 1995, and the first since language restrictions were last lifted in 1999, that the top three songs were all sung in a non-English language: Italian (first) and French (second and third).
| Wins | Language | Years | Countries |
|---|---|---|---|
| 35 | English | 1967, 1969, 1970, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1980, 1981, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2023 | United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Turkey, Ukraine, Greece, Finland, Russia, Norway, Germany, Azerbaijan, Austria, Israel |
| 15 | French | 1956, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1977, 1983, 1986, 1988 | Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Austria, Monaco, Belgium |
| 3 | Dutch | 1957, 1959, 1969 | Netherlands |
| Italian | 1964, 1990, 2021 | Italy | |
| Hebrew | 1978, 1979, 1998 | Israel | |
| 2 | German | 1966, 1982 | Austria, Germany |
| Spanish | 1968, 1969 | Spain | |
| Swedish | 1984, 1991 | Sweden | |
| Norwegian | 1985, 1995 | Norway | |
| Ukrainian | 2004, 2022 | Ukraine | |
| 1 | Danish | 1963 | Denmark |
| Serbo-Croatian | 1989 | Yugoslavia | |
| Serbian | 2007 | Serbia | |
| Crimean Tatar | 2016 | Ukraine | |
| Portuguese | 2017 | Portugal |
Three times in the history of the contest, songs have been sung, wholly or partially, in imaginary languages. [43] [44]
| Appearance | Country | Performer | Song |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 |  Belgium | Urban Trad | "Sanomi" |
| 2006 |  Netherlands | Treble | "Amambanda" |
| 2008 | Belgium | Ishtar | "O Julissi" |
Some performances have included phrases in sign languages on stage.
| Appearance | Country | Sign language | Performer | Song | Ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 |  Latvia | Latvian Sign Language | Walters & Kazha | "The War Is Not Over" | [45] [46] |
| 2006 |  Poland | Polish Sign Language | Ich Troje | "Follow My Heart" | [47] |
| 2011 |  Lithuania | Lithuanian Sign Language | Evelina Sašenko | "C'est ma vie" | [48] [49] |
| 2015 |  Serbia | Yugoslav Sign Language | Bojana Stamenov | "Beauty Never Lies" | [50] |
| 2019 |  France | French Sign Language | Bilal Hassani | "Roi" | [51] |
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