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 Romani, Romanian, and Romansh.

Romani

Romani is an Indo-Aryan macrolanguage of the Romani people. The largest Romani dialects are Vlax Romani (about 500,000 speakers), Balkan Romani (600,000) and Sinte Romani (300,000). Some Romani communities speak mixed languages based on the surrounding language with retained Romani-derived vocabulary – these are known by linguists as Para-Romani varieties, rather than dialects of the Romani language itself.

Romani first appeared within the phrases of “Aven Romale”, the Czech entry for the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest, before appearing within lines of “Pred da se razdeni”, the North Macedonian entry for the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest. Esma & Lozano performed “Pred da se razdeni”, finishing in 16th place in the semi final, with 28 points.

Romanian

Romanian is the official and main language of Romania and Moldova. Romanian is part of the Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages, a linguistic group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin which separated from the Western Romance languages in the course of the period from the 5th to the 8th centuries. To distinguish it within the Eastern Romance languages, in comparative linguistics it is called Daco-Romanian as opposed to its closest relatives, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Istro-Romanian. It is also spoken as a minority language by stable communities in the countries surrounding Romania (Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia and Ukraine) and by the large Romanian diaspora. In total, it is spoken by 25 million people as a first language.

Romanian appeared in full, within “Dincolo de nori”, the Romanian entry for the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest. Dan Bittman performed “Dincolo de nori”, finishing in 21st place with 14 points.

Romansh

Romansh is a Romance language of the Gallo-Romance and/or Rhaeto-Romance branch of languages spoken predominantly in the Swiss canton of the Grisons. Romansh has been recognised as a national language of Switzerland since 1938 and as an official language in correspondence with Romansh-speaking citizens since 1996, along with German, French and Italian. It also has official status in the canton of the Grisons alongside German and Italian and is used as the medium of instruction in schools in Romansh-speaking areas. It is sometimes grouped by linguists with Ladin and Friulian as the Rhaeto-Romance languages, though this is disputed.

Romansh appeared in full, within “Viver senza tei”, the Swiss entry for the 1989 Eurovision Song Contest. Furbaz performed “Viver senza tei”, finishing in 13th place with 47 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/EBU/escLIVEmusic1