In 2011 of the entries only 8 (Spain, France, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Poland, Serbia, Cyprus and Portugal) performed their entry entirely in a
language other than English. France's decision to perform its operatic
song in Corsican means that this year had not a single performance in
French (except one sentence in Lithuania's chorus). After the competition was dominated by French in its earlier years and French was at least the second most important language over the decades this year marks a new down point.
Even countries which usually would be expected to perform in their own language like Slovakia, San Marino and Slovenia have chosen English.
Last year out of the 14 non-qualifiers, 9 had performed in their national language and only 4 songs performed in a language other than English qualified (Serbia, Greece, Portugal, Israel).
The rule requiring countries to sing in their own national language has been changed several times over the years. With this linguistic allowance the Belgian entry in 2003, "Sanomi", was sung in an artificial language. This year the Norwegian entry, "Haba Haba", which was sung in English and Swahili, was the first song to be sung in an African language.
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual competition held among active member countries of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
