Languages of the World Quiz
Mandarin, Cyrillic, Esperanto and a language with no known relatives: 15 questions on how the world talks.
What is the official language of Brazil?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Portuguese
Brazil was a Portuguese colony from 1500 until independence in 1822, and Portuguese remains the official language, spoken by nearly all of its more than 200 million people.
Brazil has more Portuguese speakers than all the other Portuguese-speaking countries combined, including Portugal, Angola and Mozambique.
Which alphabet is used to write Russian?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Cyrillic
Russian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, which developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the ninth and tenth centuries and is named after the missionary Saint Cyril.
Modern Russian Cyrillic has 33 letters, and the alphabet is also used for Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Kazakh and many other languages.
Which language has the most native speakers in the world?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin Chinese has close to a billion native speakers according to Ethnologue, far ahead of Spanish in second place with roughly 490 million and English in third.
Mandarin is a tonal language, so the syllable ma can mean mother, hemp, horse or scold depending on the pitch used.
How many official languages does the United Nations have?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Six
The UN has six official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. Documents are published in all six and speeches are interpreted between them.
Arabic was the last to be added, in 1973; the other five date from the organisation's founding in 1945.
Which constructed language did L. L. Zamenhof publish in 1887 in the hope of uniting the world?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Esperanto
Ludwik Zamenhof, an eye doctor from Białystok, published Esperanto in 1887 under the pen name Doktoro Esperanto, meaning one who hopes. It is the most spoken constructed language today.
Esperanto has an estimated few thousand native speakers, children raised in it by enthusiast parents, including financier George Soros.
English belongs to which branch of the Indo-European language family?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Germanic
English is a Germanic language, descended from the dialects brought to Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers from the fifth century onwards, and it is most closely related to Dutch, Frisian and German.
Although Germanic in structure, well over half of English vocabulary comes from French and Latin, largely because of the Norman conquest of 1066.
Which of these languages is written from right to left?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Arabic
Arabic is written from right to left in a cursive script where most letters join to their neighbours. Hebrew, Persian and Urdu are also written right to left.
Arabic numerals, however, are written left to right even inside right-to-left text, with the largest digit first.
Which of these English words was borrowed from Arabic?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Algebra
Algebra comes from the Arabic al-jabr, meaning the reunion of broken parts, which appeared in the title of a ninth-century book on solving equations by the Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi.
Other everyday English words that came from Arabic include coffee, sugar, cotton, sofa, magazine, admiral and zero.
The word "robot" entered English from which language?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Czech
Robot comes from the Czech word robota, meaning forced labour. It was introduced in Karel Čapek's 1920 play R.U.R., and Čapek credited his brother Josef with suggesting the word.
Other English words with Czech roots include pistol, from the Czech píšťala, and the name of the dance known as the polka.
Which language is written in the Devanagari script?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Hindi
Hindi is written in Devanagari, the script recognisable by the horizontal line running along the top of each word. It is also used for Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit.
Hindi and Urdu are largely the same spoken language, but Urdu is written in a Perso-Arabic script and draws more of its vocabulary from Persian.
Counting native and second-language speakers together, which language has the most speakers in the world?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
English
English has close to 1.5 billion total speakers according to Ethnologue, but only around 370 million of them are native speakers; the vast majority learned it as a second language.
Modern Standard Arabic is unusual in having no native speakers at all, as everyone learns it at school after their local dialect.
Afrikaans, spoken in South Africa and Namibia, developed mainly from which European language?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Dutch
Afrikaans grew out of the Dutch spoken by settlers at the Cape from the seventeenth century, simplified and influenced by Malay, Khoisan and other languages. It became an official language in 1925.
Afrikaans is one of the youngest languages in the world, and Dutch speakers can usually read it without any formal study.
The Korean alphabet, Hangul, was created in the 1440s under which king?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Sejong
King Sejong the Great introduced Hangul to his court in 1443 and promulgated it in 1446 so that ordinary Koreans could read and write without years of studying Chinese characters.
Hangul letters are shaped to mirror the position of the tongue and lips when making each sound, which is why linguists admire its design.
Which country has the most living languages, with around 840?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country on Earth, with around 840 living languages among roughly 10 million people, thanks to its rugged, isolating terrain.
Tok Pisin, an English-based creole, serves as the country's main common language alongside English and Hiri Motu.
Which European language is a language isolate, with no known relatives?
Got a hunch? Pick the answer that feels right.
Basque
Basque, spoken in northern Spain and south-western France, is unrelated to any other living language and is thought to predate the arrival of Indo-European languages in Europe.
Hungarian and Finnish are both Uralic languages, while Albanian forms its own branch of the Indo-European family.
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All General Knowledge quizzes →About the Languages of the World Quiz
Around 7,000 languages are spoken on Earth, and one small Pacific nation accounts for roughly 840 of them. English has more speakers than any other language, yet Mandarin Chinese has more than twice as many native speakers. Meanwhile, a Czech playwright's brother gave us the word robot and a Korean king invented an entire alphabet.
These 15 questions cover the most spoken languages, writing systems from Cyrillic to Devanagari, where everyday words were borrowed from and the families that link languages across continents. Speaker figures are checked against Ethnologue. Good for language learners, travellers and anyone who enjoys the stories behind the words we use.
You will find 15 multiple choice questions here, each with four options. Difficulty: Hard. Most people finish in about 6 minutes, and every answer comes with a short explanation and one extra fact worth keeping.
How to play
Read the question and pick one of the four answers. The correct answer is revealed straight away with a short explanation, then press Next question to keep going. At the end you get your score out of 15 and a full review of your round. Play again any time and the questions arrive in a fresh order. There is no timer and no account.
Good to know before you play
Where do the speaker numbers come from?
From Ethnologue, the standard reference on world languages. Figures change with each edition, so the quiz asks which language ranks first rather than exact totals.
What does the Languages of the World Quiz cover?
The most spoken languages, alphabets and scripts, loanwords, constructed languages like Esperanto and language families such as Germanic and Romance.
Is this quiz hard?
It is rated Hard. Questions about Brazil, Russian and the United Nations are easy, while Hangul, Afrikaans and language isolates test real enthusiasts.
Answer key: all 15 questions with explanations
- What is the official language of Brazil?
Portuguese Brazil was a Portuguese colony from 1500 until independence in 1822, and Portuguese remains the official language, spoken by nearly all of its more than 200 million people. Brazil has more Portuguese speakers than all the other Portuguese-speaking countries combined, including Portugal, Angola and Mozambique. - Which alphabet is used to write Russian?
Cyrillic Russian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, which developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the ninth and tenth centuries and is named after the missionary Saint Cyril. Modern Russian Cyrillic has 33 letters, and the alphabet is also used for Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Kazakh and many other languages. - Which language has the most native speakers in the world?
Mandarin Chinese Mandarin Chinese has close to a billion native speakers according to Ethnologue, far ahead of Spanish in second place with roughly 490 million and English in third. Mandarin is a tonal language, so the syllable ma can mean mother, hemp, horse or scold depending on the pitch used. - How many official languages does the United Nations have?
Six The UN has six official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. Documents are published in all six and speeches are interpreted between them. Arabic was the last to be added, in 1973; the other five date from the organisation's founding in 1945. - Which constructed language did L. L. Zamenhof publish in 1887 in the hope of uniting the world?
Esperanto Ludwik Zamenhof, an eye doctor from Białystok, published Esperanto in 1887 under the pen name Doktoro Esperanto, meaning one who hopes. It is the most spoken constructed language today. Esperanto has an estimated few thousand native speakers, children raised in it by enthusiast parents, including financier George Soros. - English belongs to which branch of the Indo-European language family?
Germanic English is a Germanic language, descended from the dialects brought to Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers from the fifth century onwards, and it is most closely related to Dutch, Frisian and German. Although Germanic in structure, well over half of English vocabulary comes from French and Latin, largely because of the Norman conquest of 1066. - Which of these languages is written from right to left?
Arabic Arabic is written from right to left in a cursive script where most letters join to their neighbours. Hebrew, Persian and Urdu are also written right to left. Arabic numerals, however, are written left to right even inside right-to-left text, with the largest digit first. - Which of these English words was borrowed from Arabic?
Algebra Algebra comes from the Arabic al-jabr, meaning the reunion of broken parts, which appeared in the title of a ninth-century book on solving equations by the Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi. Other everyday English words that came from Arabic include coffee, sugar, cotton, sofa, magazine, admiral and zero. - The word "robot" entered English from which language?
Czech Robot comes from the Czech word robota, meaning forced labour. It was introduced in Karel Čapek's 1920 play R.U.R., and Čapek credited his brother Josef with suggesting the word. Other English words with Czech roots include pistol, from the Czech píšťala, and the name of the dance known as the polka. - Which language is written in the Devanagari script?
Hindi Hindi is written in Devanagari, the script recognisable by the horizontal line running along the top of each word. It is also used for Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit. Hindi and Urdu are largely the same spoken language, but Urdu is written in a Perso-Arabic script and draws more of its vocabulary from Persian. - Counting native and second-language speakers together, which language has the most speakers in the world?
English English has close to 1.5 billion total speakers according to Ethnologue, but only around 370 million of them are native speakers; the vast majority learned it as a second language. Modern Standard Arabic is unusual in having no native speakers at all, as everyone learns it at school after their local dialect. - Afrikaans, spoken in South Africa and Namibia, developed mainly from which European language?
Dutch Afrikaans grew out of the Dutch spoken by settlers at the Cape from the seventeenth century, simplified and influenced by Malay, Khoisan and other languages. It became an official language in 1925. Afrikaans is one of the youngest languages in the world, and Dutch speakers can usually read it without any formal study. - The Korean alphabet, Hangul, was created in the 1440s under which king?
Sejong King Sejong the Great introduced Hangul to his court in 1443 and promulgated it in 1446 so that ordinary Koreans could read and write without years of studying Chinese characters. Hangul letters are shaped to mirror the position of the tongue and lips when making each sound, which is why linguists admire its design. - Which country has the most living languages, with around 840?
Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country on Earth, with around 840 living languages among roughly 10 million people, thanks to its rugged, isolating terrain. Tok Pisin, an English-based creole, serves as the country's main common language alongside English and Hiri Motu. - Which European language is a language isolate, with no known relatives?
Basque Basque, spoken in northern Spain and south-western France, is unrelated to any other living language and is thought to predate the arrival of Indo-European languages in Europe. Hungarian and Finnish are both Uralic languages, while Albanian forms its own branch of the Indo-European family.
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