Needed by: 4/29/2011

Question: Why are French and English official Olympic languages?

name: Brooke from: mosthauntedfan13@gmail.com confirm: mosthauntedfan13@gmail.com area: Entertainment/Sports reason: Just curious school: No

Greetings from ipl2,

Thanks for your question about languages at the Olympic Games. I did some research and found some information that I hope you will find satisfying.

I was not able to find a concise explanation of why French and English are both used at the Olympic Games. However, a recent news article attributes the use of French to the fact that the Olympic Games were revived by a Frenchman.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/8190503/London-2012-Olympics-to-be-held-in-French.html

The article came up in the second page of a google search for “french english official language Olympics.”

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=english%20language%20international%20sporting%20events&sa=N&tab=sw#q=french+english+official+language+Olympics&hl=en&biw=1200&bih=670&prmd=ivnsfd&ei=vzm2TZ_kKOe70QHQwaDoDw&start=10&sa=N&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=bce1d2c2cef6738f

I identified this article because of its news media origin, which indicates greater reliability than results like user-generated answer forums.

In the ipl2’s list of resources, I also was led to the Olympic movement site where I found some original documentation about the official languages at the Olympic Games that pinpoint the change from one official language (French) to two official languages as happening in the 1949 Olympic Charter.

I started on the main page of the Olympic Movement website.

http://www.olympic.org/

I scrolled down and found a link to The Olympic Studies Center, which I clicked on:

http://www.olympic.org/olympic-studies-centre

Then, looking for some indications about the language of the Olympics over time, I clicked on a link on the right for “The Olympic Charter through time.” I clicked on this and then chose the “The Charter Through Time” tab, which lists the charter and the languages in the charter since the first charter in 1908.

http://www.olympic.org/content/olympism-in-action/specialized-sections/olympic-charters/?tab=1

I clicked on the 1930 document, the first one in English, and found a clause on the first page stating that, “the French language is the official language of the Committee. In case of divergence between the texts, the French text only is to be accepted.” It is not until the 1949 “Olympic Charter – Olympic Rules” that English and French are both cited as official languages on page 28 of the PDF document.

Two other resources provide additional information about language policy over the course of the Olympic Games.

A basic history of the revival of the Olympics describes how the Games were started by a Frenchman in 1896. I found this short history by first searching ipl2’s list of resources and finding the scholastic website with Olympics resources.

http://teacher.scholastic.com/researchtools/researchstarters/olympics/

Then I clicked on the link partway down the page under the heading “Evidence and impact of nationalism on the Olympic Games,” which leads to this brief historical article:

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=5067

I also performed a google scholar search to see if academic sources would provide more information about the history of language use at the Olympics. I searched with the following keywords: “olympics ‘official language’ change.” Here is the link to the results:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&ds=bo&sugexp=ldymls&pq=olympics+official+language+change&xhr=t&q=olympics+%22official+language%22+change&cp=28&qe=b2x5bXBpY3MgIm9mZmljaWFsIGxhbmd1YWdlIiBjaGFuZ2U&qesig=VOEgyZ3O-PAHe_v5nkHvTA&pkc=AFgZ2tmRKTyHSPD6ceFyMKIVJ2BWqSg1wTwcbus_FHildH18cIS0lA_AIcHCKU-fGhV7g1JFDU38DOdjzekny3D7bWI9kriNyw&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1200&bih=670&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=ps

The eighth search result is a free article that provides a good overview of the language policy negotiations that have occurred and the insistence by various francophone organizations that French continue to be considered an equal “official language” of the Olympic Games.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a912356137&fulltext=713240928

I hope these resources are informative and thank you for sending your interesting question to ipl2. If you have further questions, please feel free to send them to us.