Another Frothing Allegation

I was blessed with an email yesterday exhorting me to stand up for my country and raise particular hell about our national anthem being sung in Hindi at the upcoming Vancouver Olympics.
Oh for Dog’s sake. There’s even a Facebook page if you’d like to read about this frothing allegation.
Not only is not the case, if you read to the end of this Snopes entry you’ll find some similar quack grass about Advance Australia Fair.

O Canada gets translated all the time. So do a bunch of other national anthems. There’s no cause for alarm. Here are a few other languages O Canada has been translated to.
Here’s some history about the anthem.
And it was sung in Cree during the Opening Ceremonies of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.

I’m not sure what it was about this particular email that galled me so much. This sort of nonsense gets passed around the globe all the time and I usually just laugh.
Maybe it’s the scarcely hidden racism covered with a veneer of nationalism.
Perhaps it’s the suggestion that “they” are taking over while we lie back and expose our throats once more.
Or maybe it’s because there was just enough in it, twisted and perverted though it be, to seem plausible for those of us too tired, or too shallow, or too busy to think for ourselves.
Our national anthem will be sung in Canada’s official languages of French and English or maybe we'll have a surprise with another native tongue doing the honours.
If someone wants to sing along in Hindi, or Swahili, Tagalog, Romanche, Esperanto, Klingon or any other language, then they are welcome.