Don't Guess the Wrong Language! Quiz

Answer: Hungarian

The Indo-European languages all evolved from Proto-Indo-European, an ancient language spoken thousands of years ago. Certain European languages, however, such as Hungarian, Estonian, and Finnish, evolved separately from Proto-Uralic and are today considered to be Uralic languages.

Answer: Malayalam

A palindrome is a word or phrase that reads the same way forwards and backwards. The only other language to be a palindrome is Nauruan, spoken in Nauru in Oceania. Malalayam is spoken in the south Indian state of Kerala.

Answer: Korean

A language isolate is a language that is not tracable to any other language and thus not part of a language family. Korean has more speakers than all other language isolates combined. Tagalog belongs to the Austronesian language family which also includes languages such as Javanese, Malagasy, and Hawaiian. Mandarin Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family, which includes languages such as Burmese and the Tibetan languages. Vietnamese belongs to the Austroasiatic language family, which also includes Khmer, the most widely spoken language in Cambodia.

Answer: Afroasiatic

Afroasiatic is a major language family today and is most notable for containing Arabic, with over 200 million native speakers. The first language to be written was Sumerian, which was a language isolate. The first language to come from a family and be written, however, was Ancient Egyptian of the Afroasiatic language family.

Answer: Na-dené

The Na-Dené languages are spoken in North America, primarily in Northwestern North America. The Niger-Congo languages are spoken throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. The Afro-Asiatic family includes Arabic, which is spoken in Northern Africa, and the Austronesian languages family includes Malagasy, which is spoken throughout Madagascar.

Answer: Czech Republic

There are more than 60,000 Vietnamese people in the Czech Republic, making them the largest immigrant minority to the country. Nguyen, a common Vietnamese surname, is the ninth most popular surname in the Czech Republic.

Answer: Katabaga

Katabaga used to be spoken in the Philippines. The other three languages were indigenous to Australia, an area that is seeing many of its indigenous languages disappear rapidly.

Answer: Hebrew

Hebrew originally went dead around 200 AD. This means it was still used in special texts, but not spoken. Hebrew was revived in the 1800s due to the Zionist movement, where Jewish people wanted to return to their homeland in Palestine and recognize a Jewish culture. It now has more than 5 million native speakers.

Answer: VSO (verb subject object)

Approximately 9% of the world's languages primarily use the "verb subject object" word order, including Malagasy and Hawaiian.

Answer: Warao

In English we say "He hates her". This is known as "subject verb object" word order (SVO). The Warao equivalent of this would be "Her he hates". Warao is one of the few languages in the world to primarily use the "object subject verb" order, with all of the others also coming from South America. Warao is spoken in Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname.