French became an official Olympic language due to the revival of the modern Olympic Games by a Frenchman in 1896, and both French and English were declared official languages in the 1949 Olympic Charter. Research identified that French organizations have insisted on maintaining the status of French as an equal official language to English in Olympic language policies and negotiations over time.

1. 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:

2. 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=oly
mpics+%22official+language
%22+change&cp=28&qe=b2x5bXBpY3MgIm9mZmljaWFsIGxhbmd1YWdlIiBjaGFuZ
2U&qesig=VOEgyZ3O-
PAHe_v5nkHvTA&pkc=AFgZ2tmRKTyHSPD6ceFyMKIVJ2BWqSg1wTwcbus_FHild
H18cIS0lA_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

3. 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.