Archery is a truly international sport

According to World Archery (previously known as FITA) – the governing body of this sport – there are 8 million archers worldwide with around 140 countries as member associations. This makes archery a truly international sport.

The two main languages of archery are English and French. English, as one of the world’s major languages, is the language the DOS (Director of Shooting) uses during all international events. But, most often, if not held in an English-speaking country, events are bilingual affairs, with the local language also being used to translate what the DOS says.

Recently, French has taken a back-stage role, fact also obvious by the change of the name of Fédération Internationale de Tir à l’Arc (FITA) to World Archery (WA). Still, as the headquarters of WA is based in Lausanne in Switzerland, archery officials continue to use French with archers in French-speaking countries. World Archery’s official website is also bilingual, English-French.

But let’s not forget that, although on the archery field the contestants use English as the de facto language, what makes archery truly international are the different countries the archers themselves come from. Major archery events can see the participation of tens of countries at a time.

Let’s take for example the last international event I’ve participated in. The Archery World Cup – Stage 1 was held in April 2012 in Shanghai, China, and 51 countries participated, bringing along a total of 299 competitors. To this number you also have to add coaches, physiotherapists, psychologists, and managers and then you end up with 100 participants more. That is indeed international!

Before I went to the World Cup, I also participated in a national competition here in Thailand. It was organized in Bangkok by Kasetsart University and my team was made up of three different nationalities: Thai, Bhutanese and Romanian. We called ourselves ThaiBhuRo and managed to lose the team bronze medal match by one point!

To bring things even closer to today’s date, for the last month I’ve been shooting at the Bangkok Training Center alongside archers from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Iraq and, of course, Thai. Not to mention that our coach is Korean. While English is the language we use to communicate between ourselves, many archers showed interest in learning a bit of Thai, while the Thais were curious how words sounded in other languages.

So, we decided to make a video with each archer saying the word “archery” in his or her language. We had six participating nationalities and below you can find the English transliterations:

1) Korean – yang-gung

2) Thai – ying tanu

3) Arabic – kaws wha saham

4) Bengali – tirondaz

5) Burmese – myarphit

6) Romanian – tir cu arcul

I know, you’re asking yourself, “But how do these words really sound when spoken out loud?” Not to worry. View the video below and listen to international archers say the word “archery” in these six languages:

 If you enjoyed this video, you might also like other archery videos on our YouTube Channel.