Keywords

Nuestro Himno

Language

Recently some latino celebrities recorded a Spanish language version of the American national anthem, leading president Bush to state:

I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English, and they ought to learn to sing the National Anthem in English.

This led Eric Bakovic at Language Log to do some research:

Most interesting and relevant, though, is that there’s a Spanish-language Wikipedia article on The Star-Spangled Banner  , which has a briefer version of the history behind it (still, more comprehensive than the one at The National Anthem Project ), with two full translations ( La bandera estrellada and La bandera de estrellas ), the latter dated 1919 by Francis Haffkine Snow — see this Library of Congress entry  , where it says that [t]his version of the song was prepared by the U.S. Bureau of Education”. The lyrics of * Nuestro Himno * appears to be derived from this 1919 translation; it’s generally similar, though some lyrics appear to have been altered to soften war references”.

Benjamin Zimmer then found versions in other languages as well, including Yiddish and Samoan.

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