No matter what language they use, national anthem writers certainly like to make their songs difficult.

As many Americans would be inclined to agree, Francis Scott Key’s “Star-Spangled Banner,” which he penned after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1814, is one of the most unsingable songs ever written.

Not only are the notes tough to master, with the word “say” in the first line an entire octave and a half below its highest notes, but its awkward phrases have been tripping up amateur and professional singers ever since the song became our national anthem in 1931.

According to a recent Harris poll, which I wrote about back in March, two out of three American adults don’t know, or consistently forget, all of the words to the song. And many don’t even know that the anthem’s name is “The Star-Spangled Banner” or how it came to be written.

Critics of the bellicose anthem have tried unsuccessfully for years, in fact, to replace it with something with an easier tune and a less forgettable lyric.

And now comes the Spanish version, released over the airwaves last Friday as an anthem of solidarity for the immigration movement that’s exploded in this country in recent weeks. It’s called “Nuestro Himno” – “Our Anthem” – and was recorded by several Latin pop stars who contributed lines in the ensemble style of the 1985 song “We Are the World.” The songwriters preserved the national anthem’s melody and form, but spiced it up a bit with Latin pop rhythms.

Yet after looking over the revised anthem – in its English translation, that is, since my Spanish is rusty – I can’t see that the songwriters did Spanish-speaking people any big favors with their new rendition. Those pesky ramparts may be gone, and there are no more bombs bursting in air, but the words to “Nuestro Himno” may wind up being as difficult to master as anything Key could have come up with.

Try singing the first couple of lines of verse one, for example, while a salsa band is playing in your head:

“It’s sunrise. Do you see by the light of the dawn

What we proudly hailed last nightfall?”

In the Spanish anthem, the familiar “Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight” has been rewritten to read:

“Its stars, its stripes yesterday streamed above fierce combat …”

Caramba!

And whereas the national anthem’s glaring rockets and bursting bombs “gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,” the Spanish version cuts right to the chase with the lines:

“Throughout the night, they proclaimed: ‘We will defend it!’

Tell me! Does its starry beauty still wave

Above the land of the free,

The sacred flag?”

The second stanza of “Nuestro Himno” is even more obscure than the first, with parts of it equally challenging to anyone who dares attempt to warble their fractured phrasings:

“Its stars, its stripes,

liberty, we are the same.

We are brothers in our anthem.

In fierce combat, a symbol of victory

and the march toward liberty.

Throughout the night they proclaimed, ‘We will defend it!'”

I suppose something might have been lost in the translation, but it’s hard to imagine that this new anthem could really be music to anyone’s ears.