The basic gist of your national anthem

Il Canto degli Italiani (more known as Fratelli d’Italia).

Short version: Italians, it’s about bloody time we actually gather together and kick some Austrian arse! They’re jerks and bastards, they’re eagles with no feathers, robbing and murdering Poles and stuff, and their mercenaries are wimps; we beat them in the past, we can beat them again. So, are you bloody coming or not?

There’s a more flowery translation on the linked Wikipedia page.

I’d sum up the British one more as “Yeah, we like the Queen. Now let’s take over the world!”

The Canadian national anthem: “We stand in goal (oops, I mean on guard) for thee.”

Ireland. If the tyrants from across the waves come we’ll give them a fight.

Every Saturday night in the Dublin pubs.

The Finnish national anthem basically goes “There’s this country up north and we’re really rather fond of it. Go Finland, we’re all rooting for you!”

“Star Spangled Banner” says to me that the American Flag is more sacrosanct than the land it represents.

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China:

Get your ass up if you’re not willing to let some dude walk all over you. We’ve got a shitton of people who all are of one heart and we can just walk right into the enemy’s gunfire and not even give a shit.

Korea: Pretty mountains! Lovely oceans! Long live Korea!

North Korea:

We’re such a beautiful land and strong people and our culture has been around a long-ass time. Mountains, waves, countryside…we got all that shit, yadda yadda yadda. Korea will always be strong and rich.

Interestingly enough, there wasn’t any reference to you-know-who.

We know strange words like girt.

Australia Girt by sea

My own personal national anthem goes like this:

“All praise to Mississippienne!
For she can create threads I can really get behind!
For I’m an anthematologist
Considered one of the leading ones in the world
(For some reason, don’t ask me why)
Most of my free time is spent studying the anthems of the world
And seeing a Doper view of them
Is just fucking awesome!”

I am a nation of people who can’t rhyme. :slight_smile:

(You can see my views on over 400 national anthems at nationalanthems.info

Well, we used to use “My Country, 'Tis Of Thee”, which is "I’m just talkin’ bout America! Then we can dig it!" but that was embarrassing 'cause it’s filk to “God Save the Queen”. We had to come up with another one in a hurry.

Slovenia’s really only says: let’s all just get along!!

I love the contrast between the civil and royal anthems of Denmark.

The civil anthem says: “Our country is really pretty, it has lots of trees, the people are good-looking, and Norse goddesses live here.”

The royal anthem says: “King Christian beat the shit out of a lot of Swedish people so do not fuck with Margrethe the Second because she will fuck you up!!

Yeah, I always found the French words disturbing. “Your arms know how to carry the sword and cross”? I am not a Christian, and refuse to bow to their cultural imperialism!

Sweden

The North (no mentioning of the country’s name, it was written in a very pan-Scandinavian spirit) with its glorious past is, has always been and will always be, a nice place to live and to die in.

Not a national, but rather a provincial anthem - I always loved the “message” of Farewell to Nova Scotia.

Basically, our country is sea-bound and dreary but I love it and I’m sad to leave to fight. My brothers are all dead, but they are better off than me - at least they have some peace!

And have a drink!

(Well, the original verses of Preseren’s poem say that, they didn’t pick one of those lyrics for the anthem. Same with Germany’s leaving out the verse about German wine and German women. Sheesh, people!)

Well, if we want to get into subnational anthems, Ontario’s is second only to Small Small World in sheer earworm mind-persistence.

A place to stand/
And a place to grow/
We call this land/
Ontario…