Test your knowledge about global languages with this fun quiz  

Since times of antiquity, language has been an integral part of human life. What started off with grunts and sounds evolved to complex linguistic formations over the course of numerous centuries. Language is more than just grammar and communication, it is a vessel which holds cultures and traditions. Today, it is estimated that there are more than 7,100 languages spoken all over the world. Take this fun quiz to test your knowledge about the global languages. 

Q1. Which language has the largest number of words according to dictionary entries? 

1. English 

2. Hindi 

3. Mandarin 

4. Spanish 

Q2. Which of these languages does not make use of alphabet? 

1. Japanese 

2. Korean 

3. Mandarin 

4. Malay 

Q3. Which out of the following Asian languages makes use of the Latin alphabet? 

1. Thai 

2. Japanese 

3. Vietnamese 

4. Persian 

Q4. Which continent has the largest number of languages spoken? 

1. Asia 

2. Africa 

3. Europe 

4. South America 

Q5. Which amongst the following is the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language? 

1. Na’vi 

2. Esperanto 

3. Klingon 

4. Dothraki 

Answers 

Q1. (a) 
According to dictionary entries, the English languages takes holds the title of the most number of words. It has an estimated 200,000 words as of today, with the number growing slightly with each passing year. Out of these, around 171,476 are in use today while the remaining 47,156 are considered to be obsolete words. 

Q2. (c) 
Mandarin is one of the very few languages in the world today which does not make use of alphabets or a compact syllabary. Instead, its language system is logo syllabic. This means that it makes use of characters which represent syllables, sounds, words and even phrases of spoken Chinese.  

Q3. (c) 
The writing system which is used in Vietnam was developed by Christian missionaries who travelled to the country during the 17^th century. They primarily made use of the Latin script, Portuguese orthographic conventions as well as a few diacritics in the creation of additional sounds, or in order to denote tones. The Vietnamese alphabet consists of 29 letters. 

Q4. (a) 
The continent of Asia is home to as many as 2,300 languages which are spoken by approximately 4.46 billion people. Some of the most widely spoken ones include Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Bengali and Japanese. 

Q5. (b) 
An international auxiliary language refers to a language which has been created as a means of communication for people from different countries who do not share the same first language. Esperanto has been regarded as one of the most popular of such languages, and was devised in 1887 by a Polish linguist and ophthalmologist, Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof.