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 Norwegian, Polish and Polish Sign Language.

Norwegian

Norwegian is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family spoken mainly in Norway, where it is an official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional varieties; some Norwegian and Swedish dialects, in particular, are very close. These Scandinavian languages, together with Faroese and Icelandic as well as some extinct languages, constitute the North Germanic languages. Faroese and Icelandic are not mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form because continental Scandinavian has diverged from them. While the two Germanic languages with the greatest numbers of speakers, English and German, have close similarities with Norwegian, neither is mutually intelligible with it. Norwegian is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age.

Norwegian appeared in full, within “Voi-voi”, the Norwegian entry for the 1960 Eurovision Song Contest. Nora Brockstedt performed “Voi-voi”, finishing in 4th place with 11 points.

Polish

Polish is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic subgroup, within the Indo-European language family and is written in the Latin script. It is primarily spoken in Poland and serves as the official language of the country, as well as the language of the Polish diaspora around the world. In 2024, there were over 39.7 million Polish native speakers. It ranks as the sixth-most-spoken among languages of the European Union. Polish is subdivided into regional dialects. It maintains strict T–V distinction pronouns, honorifics and various forms of formalities when addressing individuals.

Polish appeared in full, within “To nie ja!”, the Polish entry for the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest. Edyta Górniak performed “To nie ja!”, finishing in 2nd place with 166 points.

Polish Sign Language

Polish Sign Language is the language of the deaf community in Poland. Polish Sign Language uses a distinctive one-handed manual alphabet based on the alphabet used in Old French Sign Language and therefore appears to be related to French Sign Language. It may also have common features with Russian Sign Language and German Sign Language, which is related to the history of Poland during the Partitions, when Russification and Germanisation influenced the Polish language and may also have borrowings from the sign language used in the Austrian partition. Its lexicon and grammar are distinct from the Polish language, although there is a manually coded version of Polish known as System Językowo-Migowy, which is often used by interpreters on television and by teachers in schools.

Polish Sign Laanguage appeared in full, within “Follow My Heart”, the Polish entry for the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest. Ich Troje performed “Follow My Heart”, finishing in 11th place in the semi final, with 70 points.

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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/ESC:56-73/escLIVEmusic1/EBU