This year, the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest featured a record breaking twenty languages. Eurovision Ireland will be looking at all the languages that have been performed at the Contest, since 1956, in our latest #AtoZ. Today, we continue the series with Icelandic, Irish and Italian.

Icelandic

Icelandic is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland, where it is the national language. Since it is a West Scandinavian language, it is most closely related to Faroese, western Norwegian dialects, and the extinct language Norn. It is not mutually intelligible with the continental Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) and is more distinct from the most widely spoken Germanic languages, English and German. The written forms of Icelandic and Faroese are very similar, but their spoken forms are not mutually intelligible.

Icelandic appeared in full, within “Gleðibankinn”, the Icelandic entry for the 1986 Eurovision Song Contest. ICY performed “Gleðibankinn”, finishing in 16th place with 19 points.

Irish

Irish is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous to the island of Ireland. It was the majority of the population’s first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century, in what is sometimes characterised as a result of linguistic imperialism.

Irish appeared in full, within “Ceol an Ghrá”, the Irish entry for the 1972 Eurovision Song Contest. Sandie Jones performed “Ceol an Ghrá”, finishing in 15th place with 72 points.

Italian

Italian is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. It evolved from the colloquial Latin of the Roman Empire and is the least divergent language from Latin, together with Sardinian. It is spoken by 68 to 85 million people, including 64 million native speakers as of 2024. Some speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties) and a local language of Italy, most frequently the language spoken at home in their place of origin.

Italian appeared in full, within “Aprite le finestre”, the Italian entry for the 1956 Eurovision Song Contest. Franca Raimondi performed “Aprite le finestre”, finishing in an undisclosed place.

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The Eurovision Community, which Eurovision Ireland are a part of, celebrates diversity through music. Please keep your comments respectful. We will not tolerate racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, body-shaming or any other derogatory or hostile language.

Author: Richard Taylor

Source: Eurovision Ireland, Wikipedia & YouTube/escLIVEmusic1/ESC:56-73