Madam, – While very much enjoying Saturday’s final of the Eurovision Song Contest, I was nevertheless struck by how monoglot the event has become. Just six of the 25 finalists sang in a language native to their country.
These were the UK and Ireland (both songs in English), Greece (although one of the singers sang in English), France, Spain and Serbia. All of the others sang in just one language (English), giving that language a bizarre 86 per cent of the total lyrical content, making for a rather dismal monoglot event. Could the organisers not insist that the songs be sung in one of the languages of the country represented? Let’s get back to celebrating Europe’s extraordinary cultural and linguistic diversity. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Alexander Petkov may be correct to wonder whether Azerbaijan forms part of Europe (May 17th).
However, its television channel Ictimai is a member of the European Broadcasting Union (sponsor of the song contest), along with broadcasting stations and authorities in her neighbours Armenia and Georgia, plus Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. So I assume that gives it a right to compete: perhaps an African song will win in the future.
More tellingly, banknotes of the Azerbaijan National Bank carry a map of Europe, with Azerbaijan in the bottom right-hand corner, indicating at the very least the orientation (and perhaps aspirations) of that nation’s political elite. Whether “Europe” accepts this may be a different matter. – Yours, etc,