Languages of the World: How Many Do You Know?: questions and answers
Study every question with its correct answer and explanation.
1. What is the official language of Brazil?
- A. Spanish
- B. Portuguese
- C. French
- D. English
Answer: Portuguese
Brazil was once a Portuguese colony, and today it has far more Portuguese speakers than Portugal itself.
2. Which script is used to write Russian?
- A. Latin
- B. Greek
- C. Cyrillic
- D. Arabic
Answer: Cyrillic
Cyrillic is also used to write Bulgarian, Serbian and Ukrainian, among other languages.
3. Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was created under which king in the 15th century?
- A. King Sejong the Great
- B. King Taejo
- C. King Gojong
- D. King Jeongjo
Answer: King Sejong the Great
King Sejong introduced Hangul in the 1440s so that ordinary people could learn to read easily, and South Korea celebrates Hangul Day every 9 October.
4. Which of these languages is written from right to left?
- A. Hindi
- B. Greek
- C. Thai
- D. Arabic
Answer: Arabic
Arabic words run from right to left — yet numbers inside Arabic text are written from left to right.
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5. The word 'safari' comes from Swahili. What does it mean?
- A. Wild animal
- B. Journey
- C. Grassland
- D. Hunter
Answer: Journey
In Swahili 'safari' simply means 'journey' — the word came into Swahili from the Arabic 'safar'.
6. Which of these is NOT one of Switzerland's national languages?
- A. German
- B. Romansh
- C. Italian
- D. Dutch
Answer: Dutch
Switzerland has four national languages — German, French, Italian and Romansh — but Dutch isn't one of them.
7. What is Esperanto?
- A. An ancient language of Spain
- B. A dialect of Italian
- C. A language invented for international communication
- D. A code once used by sailors
Answer: A language invented for international communication
L. L. Zamenhof published Esperanto in 1887 to be easy to learn, and its name means 'one who hopes'.
8. Which of these languages is written in the Devanagari script, just like Hindi?
- A. Nepali
- B. Tamil
- C. Urdu
- D. Bengali
Answer: Nepali
Nepali, Marathi and Sanskrit all use Devanagari, while Bengali, Tamil and Urdu each have their own scripts.
9. Everyday written Japanese mixes how many different scripts?
- A. Two
- B. Three
- C. Four
- D. Five
Answer: Three
Japanese combines kanji (characters that came from Chinese) with two syllable-based scripts, hiragana and katakana.
10. Which of these languages did NOT develop from Latin?
- A. Italian
- B. Romanian
- C. Portuguese
- D. English
Answer: English
English is a Germanic language, even though it borrowed a huge number of words from Latin and French.