Babel Trivia Quiz

Answer: Genesis

Here's the Bible story. Some time after the Great Flood that wiped out all humanity except for Noah's family, humanity had repopulated the planet. "At first," says the Bible, "the people of whole word had only one language...." (Genesis 11:1, GNT). They migrated to Babylonia, and they said to each other: "Now let's build a city with a tower that reaches the sky, so that we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered all over the earth." (Genesis 11:4, GNT)

Not so fast! "Now then," said God, "these are all one people and they speak one language; this is just the beginning of what they are going to do. Soon they will be able to do anything they want! Let us go down and mix up their language so that they will not understand each other." (Genesis 11:6-7, GNT)

So the people were scattered and their languages confounded. And they stopped building the city and the tower that became known as Babel. In many translations, such as the Good New Translation that I've used here, it is called the Tower of Babylon, but the Hebrew-derived designation "Babel" remains the most culturally widespread.

Answer: "gate of god" - Babylonian (Akkadian)

Although it is implied in Genesis that the names Babel or Babylon come from the Hebrew word meaning "confused" (or that it at least sounds like the Hebrew, depending on the specific translation you use), it may best be thought of the other way 'round, that the term for "confused" came from the name of the city, which was a rendering of the Akkadian "bâb ili" meaning "gate of god". (Akkad was a city in ancient Babylonia). The name is in turn a translation of Sumerian "Ka-dingir". The English word "babel" meaning any sort of noisy confusion, hubbub, clamor, etc. appeared around the 16th century, though such usage was certainly based on the Biblical account. Just bear in mind that etymology is a messy business!

(Sources: the Online Etymology Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary.)

Answer: a governorate in Iraq

By the early 21st century, the remains of the ancient city of Babylon, called Babel in many Biblical translations, lay in what is now the Babil Governorate in Iraq, sometimes referred to as the Babylon Province. Indeed the current capital of the governorate, Al-Hillah, lies across the Euphrates river from Babylon. Famous rulers of Babylon include Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC) and Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 BC).

Now if you guessed any of the other choices, you may be interested to know that there is in fact a Babel, Carmarthenshire, Wales. And there is a Babel Island near Tasmania, Australia. It boasts the world's largest colony of short-tailed shearwaters, also called moonbirds or muttonbirds. Lastly, there is a Bâbol-e Mashûsh, sometimes transliterated as Babel, in the Khuzestan Province of Iran. None of these, however, are the ancient Babylon referred to in the Bible.

Answer: a dance club in Iowa

Babel Fish was a Norwegian pop/rock band from Oslo, Norway. They were active mostly in the late 1980s through the early 2000s. The video to "Light Of Day" (1996) won a Spellemannprisen (a Norwegian equivalent to the Grammies) in 1999.

Alta Vista Babel Fish began in 1997. It became Yahoo! Babel Fish in 2003. Microsoft's Bing Translator superseded Babel Fish in 2012. Until then, Babel Fish was the oldest machine-translation service on the World Wide Web.

Canadian entrepreneur Oscar Jofre created The BabelFish Corporation in 1999. It offers free machine translation, with its inherent problems, and a paid translation conducted by a human being at its portal. The Canadian Hispanic Business Association recognized Jofre as one of the 10 most influential Hispanic Canadians in 2008.

Answer: the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis

Also called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and Whorfianism, it was proposed in the 1920s based on the observations of anthropologists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. Proponents contend that the structure of language limits how we construct reality and consequently what we are capable of thinking about it. As Sapir wrote: "Human beings do not live in the objective world alone.... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.... The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group."

In the novel, Babel-17 is a weaponized language, one that so actively shapes one's thoughts and perceptions of reality that it transforms the user into an unwilling traitor. Once you learn Babel-17, you cannot think but what the enemy, who created it, has intended you to think. The protagonist, Rydra Wong, one of the few heroic females of the genre at the time, is a linguist attempting to neutralize the language's effects, at great risk to her own mind. Written by Samuel Delany, "Babel-17" won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1966, along with "Flowers for Algernon".

Answer: a naval training film in World War II

The Iraqi newspaper "Babel" was produced by Uday Hussein, son of Saddam Hussein, the fifth President of Iraq, who was tried and hanged for crimes against humanity in 2006. Uday had died three years earlier in combat with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division during the invasion of Iraq.

Patti Smith was one of the motivating forces behind the punk-rock movement of the 1970s in New York City. She published "Babel" in 1978.

The Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations has produced the peer-reviewed "Babel" for more than 47 years. Articles run a gamut of topics related to language-teaching, such as "What 'Saving' Languages Might Tell Us about 'Teaching' Them", and "Getting the Boys Back into Language Classrooms".

Answer: "Star Trek" (the original series)

It was in the original 1960s "Star Trek" that a murderer terrorizes a ship full of diplomats as the Enterprise races to a neutral planet, Babel, for an important conference in the year 2267. And we also get to meet Mr. Spock's parents for the first time, Ambassador Sarek (a Vulcan) and Amanda (a human).

"Star Trek: Enterprise" featured "Babel One", which was a prequel to "Journey to Babel" -- involving Romulan treachery. "Deep Space Nine" had an episode called simply "Babel", in which a weaponized virus transforms everyone's speech into gibberish. For reasons unknown, neither the writers of "The Next Generation" nor "Star Trek: Voyager" saw fit to include a "Babel" episode.

Answer: Alberta

Mount Babel in Alberta is part of the Bow Range in Banff National Park. Although it is not among the "Ten Peaks" that comprise the Valley of the Ten Peaks, one can see Mount Babel from that valley. Towering at 10,174ft/3,101m, it was named in 1899 after the Tower of Babel and was first climbed in 1910.

Mount Babel in Quebec is on René-Levasseur Island and rises to 3,123ft/952m above sea-level. It is named after Louis Babel (1826-1912), an Oblate priest and missionary among the indigenous Innu people of Canada. The mountain was formed after a meteor hit the island some 210 million years ago.

Answer: Antarctica

Even if you've never seen the movie, perhaps you noticed that Antarctica is not a country? (It's a continent!)

"Babel" debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and earned critical acclaim. It garnered seven Academy Award nominations and seven Golden Globe nominations. The movie's soundtrack won the Oscar for Best Original Score and a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music in 2007. It was the biggest success thus far for director Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Answer: Apple Macintosh

The premiss of the game is that a passing spaceship from the planet Zantor noticed the Earthlings building the Tower of Babel. The Zantorians gave the Earthlings three spider-robots to help them finish their great Tower. But then the Earthlings double-crossed the robots and stole their energy packs. You, the player, are all three of those robots (Grabber, Pusher, and Zapper), and it is your task to regain the packs and get back to Zantor.

The initial release of "Tower of Babel" was for Amiga, and there were versions for Atari ST and for Acorn Archimedes, but there was never one for Apple Macintosh (or Apple II) or for IBM PC-compatibles, running either DOS or Microsoft Windows. There was, however, a Windows freeware puzzle called "Trogical", which was based on the "Tower of Babel" game.