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 Russian, Samogitian, and Sanskrit.

Russian

Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages and is the native language of the Russians. It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union. Russian has remained an official language of the Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine, Moldova, the Caucasus, Central Asia and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel.

Russian first appeared within phrases of “Pozdrav svijetu”, the Yugoslav entry for the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest, before appearing in full, within “Vechny strannik”, the Russian entry for the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest. Youddiph performed “Vechny strannik”, finishing in 9th place with 70 points.

Samogitian

Samogitian is an Eastern Baltic language spoken primarily in Samogitia and is often considered a dialect of Lithuanian.

Samogitian appeared in full, within “Strazdas”, the Lithuanian entry for the 1999 Eurovision Song Contest. Aistė performed “Strazdas”, finishing in 20th place with 13 points.

Sanskrit

Sanskrit is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting effect on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies.

Sanskrit appeared within phrases of “Occidentali’s Karma”, the Italian entry for the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest. Argo performed “Occidentali’s Karma”, finishing in 6th place with 334 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/escLIVEmusic1/EuroViking/EBU