Germanic Languages for Kids! Trivia Quiz

Answer: English

English is the native language of more than 350 million people, and is estimated to be understood by another 500 million or more. It is the official language of over 50 countries.

Answer: Yiddish

Yiddish is a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic, with sprinklings of other languages, and is written in the Hebrew alphabet. Israel and the United States are the countries where it is most commonly spoken.

Answer: Danish

Danish is mainly spoken in Denmark (no surprises there) and Greenland as well as some parts of Germany. At the turn of the 21st century around 6 million people spoke Danish.

Answer: Swedish

Swedish is the official language of Sweden (no surprises there) and is spoken by around 10 million people. The Swedish chef on 'The Muppet Show' mostly speaks gibberish. Fun fact: in Sweden, they call him the Norwegian chef!

Answer: German

German has over 100 million native speakers. It has official language status in Germany (obviously), Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, and is also one of the official languages of the European Union. Its reach extends beyond Europe--the African country of Namibia, which is a former colony of Germany, had German as an official language between 1984 and 1990.

Answer: Icelandic

Icelandic is spoken in...wait for it...Iceland, and also parts of Denmark. It is closely related to Faroese. Roughly one-third of a million people speak Icelandic.

Answer: Dutch

"Double Dutch" is an English phrase that means gibberish or incomprehensible speech. In fact, Dutch is used (and understood!) by more than 25 million people in countries as diverse as Belgium, Suriname, South Africa and Indonesia. Not bad at all for a language that originated in a country as small as the Netherlands.

Answer: Norwegian

Norwegian is used little outside Norway, where it has approximately 5 million native speakers. There are two official forms of Norwegian endorsed by the government, as well as numerous regional dialects.

Answer: Afrikaans

Afrikaans developed from the Dutch language spoken by Dutch settlers in South Africa in the 17th century, picking up new words from the languages of other cultural groups in the region. It is now commonly used in South Africa and Namibia as well as Botswana and Zimbabwe. It is estimated that around 15-20 million people speak Afrikaans, of which one-third claim it as their mother tongue.

Answer: Faroese

This one is pretty obscure, unless you live way up in the cold northern seas. Fewer than 100,000 people speak Faroese nowadays.

Faroese descended from the Old West Norse language used in the Middle Ages. It is related to the modern-day languages Norwegian and Icelandic, so it's more likely to be understood by vikings than pharaohs!