Since its official recognition as an independent state in about 100 years, Romania has had five different national anthems. Seven, if you also take into account the time of Kuza and the one that Nicolae Ceaușescu promoted before the “Three Colors” (see here). In the same period, there was only one anthem in Hungary, unchanged. Other countries around have changed maybe two or three anthems – especially when they transitioned to or left communism. But none of them have changed as much as we have. Of course, when we look at what hymns we’ve had, it seems normal that we’ve changed them. A “Triumphal march and reception of the flag and His Majesty” took place from Kuza The ruling prince“, which stopped working after Romania was ruled by a King not by one The ruling prince. Then in 1948, when I became republic under Soviet power, the anthem “Long Live the King” probably had to be changed. Some of them happened to other countries. After that, however, comes the part when we differ from our neighbors from the “bloc of communist countries” because we quickly change our anthem. In 1953 (Stalin’s death) we went from Crushed Shackles (in which we sat quietly building a “people’s republic”, mentioning “Romania” only once and never “Romanians”) to a more nationalistic “We praise you, Romanian ! ” ” – but in which we all the time declared that we are “brothers” with the Soviet people and “Leninists”. In the 70s, Nicolae Ceausescu wanted even more independence and changed the name of the country from “People’s Republic” to “Socialist Republic”, so he came up with “Three Colors” – a complete anthem without the Soviets and without Lenin, but still with socialism and communism. After all, in 1989 the Revolution was perhaps only natural to bring a different anthem, one without communism and especially one not chosen by a former dictator now convicted of genocide.

As officially explained (see here), “The message of the anthem “Wake up, Romanians!” is both social and national; social, as it imposes a constant state of vigilance to ensure the transition to a new world; national because it connects this awakening to the historical tradition of the Anthem contains this sublime “now or never” present in all national anthems, from the “paion” with which the Greeks fought at Marathon and Salamis to the “Marseillaise” of the French Revolution. Addressing national destiny is the highest peak that a nation can reach in its flight to divinity. This “now or never” concentrates all vital forces, mobilizing to the maximum.. On the other hand, some (see for example here or here) on the contrary, are unhappy that our anthem will be too sad, demobilizing, depressing: that we complain too much about tyrants and the dream of death, that we are no longer constructive and happier, etc.

How sad or uplifting is our hymn compared to others? How current? How constructive? As…? We have expert opinions, some of which conflict with each other, as I said above, but none of which quantitatively compares our hymn to others. Recently, a series of 3 articles in specialized journals (see below) provides such a quantitative comparison. The first study compares all the modern hymns of the world, counts the types of themes they address, and groups them into subjective categories. The second study examines all the hymns again, this time completely abandoning the subjective point of view and resorting to software packages that perform automated text analysis. A third study uses the above comparisons to analyze the case of Romania in detail. Here are some of the main ideas that emerged:

Using analysis using software that specializes in evaluating positive vs. negative sentiments conveyed by lyrics (see here), our current hymn has a sentiment rating of “neutral,” high to “positive.” On the contrary, in most of the neighboring countries and not only the sentiments assessed by the same software tool are “positive” (except, for example, Hungary, where the score is dramatic “negative”). Considering this trend, such critics as Andrii Pleshu are right when they see our anthem not necessarily “negative”, but at least “less positive than others”. But… if we look at the sentiment scores of the other four Romanian national anthems since 1881, three are actually very positive: the first (1881-1948, “Long Live the King”), the third (1953-1975, “We Praise You, Romania!” ) and the fourth (1975-1989, “Three Colors”). Only the anthem adopted under Stalin (1948-1953) had a “neutral” sentiment rating. So, the feeling of the Romanian national anthem fluctuated with the change of political power, but overall it was positive.

In another analysis (here) – this time a non-automated but still semi-quantitative follow-up of the types of themes raised in the text – the current Romanian national anthem was distinguished by an excess (compared to the international average) of concepts related to uplift, struggle and aggressiveness, respectively a lack (also compared to the average) in the positive perceptions section.

In terms of the central concepts in the hymn, automated analysis shows that the 1881 hymn focused on two concepts – social organization (around the concept of the King, of course) and environment (with references to the sun, country and heavens). – of course, the latter with a rather religious meaning). Then the first communist hymn keeps the social system as the central theme (declaring, of course, that we are no longer a kingdom but a republic), but adds (in order of importance, as measured by frequency in the text) work, time, agriculture, and combat/army. In the second communist anthem, the central theme is the social group, followed in order by people, politics, land, and life. In the third hymn, the automated analysis identifies only two main themes – struggle and time. Perhaps paradoxically, the transition to a post-communist anthem does not bring such great changes: we still have two central themes, one of which is struggle; the other, of course, is the human body (Roman blood, armed weapons, our breasts, etc.).

From a syntax/grammar point of view, the automatic analysis reveals two notable changes. First: in the current hymn, there are noticeably fewer subjective adjectives than in the past. Another: a change in the pronouns used: we move from the predominant ‘he’ in 1881 (he, ruler, king – and essentially no ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘we’, ‘you’ or ‘they/their’ ” at all )… to zero “he” in subsequent hymns. On the other hand, with communism, “we” appears much more often in the hymn, and since 1989, as a major change, “you” also appears mostly next to with “we”.

All of these changes (and others described in the cited study) certainly indicate major social changes and perhaps features that remain common across hymns. The study argues that they probably do not reflect a change in the mentality of Romanians in general, but rather a change in the mentality of the elites – those who are delegated to choose the anthem.

In order for such comparisons to make sense, three articles compare all the current national anthems of the world – only the third study provides a detailed analysis of Romania. Those interested are invited to familiarize themselves with them to learn more. For example, in a second study (see here), hymns grouped by geographic region appear to have some common features. Africans avoid using the personal pronouns “I”, “he/she” or talking about “struggle”. Instead, they prefer to use verbs of state or possession and the plural “we”; also the ratio of references to feelings to references to “state” is very high in Africa. In Latin America, concepts related to struggle, freedom, behavior, feelings are presented above average, and religion and country name are below average. In Latin America, the average sentiment index is also significantly less positive than the global average. Anthems of Central and Western Asia are characterized by positive sentiments, the use of “tu”, verbs expressing state and possession, and a high proportion of concepts related to “state” compared to those related to feelings (the exact opposite because what can be seen in Africa). In addition, Central Asians rarely use action verbs or concepts related to freedom, the body, the land, or the name of a country in their hymns. Conversely, Southeast Asian hymns overuse the word “And” compared to other hymns. In addition, they are less likely than others to use adverbs of time, or “you”, or religious themes. In the Balkan hymns, there are above average comparisons, negations, respectively references to “you” and to the struggle – less “we”. Like Latin America, they have a sentiment score below the international average. The Latin hymns of Europe are distinguished by references to the first person singular, battle, and conduct. At the same time, they are less likely to say “you”, the name of the country or land – and have a mood score below the international average. Slavic hymns are distinguished by a positive sentiment, an excess of verbs expressing state or possession, and also less frequent references to religion, struggle, body or name in the third person singular “he/she”. German-language hymns (in the narrow European sense, without English) have a positive mood score above the international average. They also have the highest ratio of state-related concepts to feeling-related concepts and excessive use of numerals – while they are well below average with negatives, subjective adjectives or references to feelings, freedom or social groups . _Read the entire article and comment on it on Contributors.ro