Languages of the World Trivia Quiz

Answer: 70,000

The Amele language is the most verbally complex language on the planet. With 69,000 finite and 960 non-finite verb forms, Amele is not even approached by languages like English, which possesses just three finite and two non-finite forms, or Chinese, which has just one form for all verbs.

Answer: 2

These three languages all use a simple open-vs-closed distinction. The vowels they use are roughly equivalent to the English 'a' in 'father' and 'u' in 'halibut'.

Answer: 119

The previous record holder, Ubykh, with 81, was eclipsed by the scientific analysis of the language of the Kalahari Bushmen. It has 119 consonants, roughly evenly distributed between click and non-click consonants.

Answer: Czech, Piraha, !Xo

Czech (Europe), Piraha (Amazon River) and !Xo (Kalahari Desert) all have sounds that occur only in those languages. They are, respectively: rolled post-alveolar fricative, voiced apico-alveolar sublaminal labial double flap, and bilabial click. Wari' comes in second, with a trill affricate shared by just four languages.

Answer: Sedang

Sedang, a language related to Vietnamese, has the most vowels, with 55. It uses four distinctions of articulation - plain, laryngeal, nasalised and nasolaryngeal - where English only uses one.

Answer: 800

Papua New Guinea has hundreds of valleys, effectively separating all tribes from each other and producing the world's densest population of different languages.

Answer: vprtskvni

This word shares with gvbrdghvnis 'he's plucking us' as the word with the most consonants in a cluster. In most Georgian word roots, six consonants is the limit, but the addition of prefixes can extend this limit.

Answer: Evenki

Evenki is a minority language of Russia.

Answer: Volapuk

Volapuk was one of the first attempts to create an international language, equally easy for everyone to learn. It attracted a few followers for some years, but was eventually abandoned.

Answer: Finnish

Finnish is agglutinative, unlike many other European languages. This allows a word to take many different functions simultaneously. Other languages in the Finno-Ugric family include Hungarian and Saami.

Answer: Piraha

Piraha, an Amazonian language, possesses the fewest speech sounds. Hawaiian (spoken on Hawaii) has 12, Rotokas (spoken on Bougainville in Papua New Guinea) 11, and Rapanui (spoken on Easter Island) 13. Interestingly, the /s/ sound in Piraha is only used by male speakers. Female speakers substitute /h/.

Answer: looking at each other hoping that the other person will do something that both parties want but neither is willing to do

The Guinness Book of Records lists this as the most difficult word for lexicographers to define succinctly. Fuegian is a minority native American language, named after the region where it is spoken, Tierra del Fuego in Argentina.

Answer: Its verbs do not change in form

Of course, none of these myths are true. Basque is moderately complex, but only when compared to Indo-European languages (of which Basque is not a member). Its sentence structure is similar to Turkish or Japanese, and it is highly regular.

Answer: Swahili

Swahili is one of the the most verbally regular languages. Only one verb has an irregular form - "kuwa" or "to be".

Answer: !Kung, Bella Coola

Ubykh permits verbal roots with no vowels, but in practical pronunciation, vowels appear to aid pronunciation.

Answer: Coptic

Coptic, which is the only remaining descendant of Ancient Egyptian, has a literary tradition that is unbroken for almost 5000 years (allowing for evolution). Sumerian is the only older written language than Ancient Egyptian, but it became extinct when the Akkadians invaded Sumer in about 1500 BC.

Answer: Afrikaans

Afrikaans has only been in separate existence for around 200 years, during the Dutch colonisation of South Africa. Icelandic is also very young, being separated from Norwegian by about 900 years of evolution. Some Pacific creoles are younger, such as Norfuk and Pitcairnese, but they are grouped under the Austronesian group as well.

Answer: Nubian

Chapakuran and Arawakan are language families of the Amazon Basin, where Bantu is a family of south-central Africa, to which Swahili, Zulu and Lingala belong. Nubian is an extinct language of Ethiopia.

Answer: xohoaaaaaa

The word "xohoaaaaaa" has the following syllable rhythm: low-low-high-low-high-low-high-low (xo-ho-a-a-a-a-a-a). Linguists believe that this may be a form which undergoes what is called "intensive reduplication", but either way, this language records the longest known vowel clusters.

Answer: Apache

Navajo and Apache both belong to the Apachean branch of the Athabaskan family, spoken from Texas north to Alaska. Wichita is a Caddoan language of Oklahoma, Alabama is spoken in the state of the same name, and Lakhota is a Siouan language spoken in North and South Dakota.

Answer: Delaware

Navajo is actually the most-spoken native American language north of Mexico, with more than 100,000 native speakers. Cree comes in second, with almost 90,000 native speakers, and Mohawk has between 2,000 and 4,000. Delaware, also known as Unami, is almost extinct, with only five speakers left in 1996.

Answer: Nilo-Saharan

The Masai language is one of the most spoken languages in eastern Africa, with more than 880,000 speakers in Kenya and Tanzania.

Answer: Arrernte, Dyirbal, Bandjalang

Dinka, Wolof and siSwati are languages of Africa; Anishinaabe, Mingo and Naskapi are from North America; and Sedang, Bikol and Lao are Asian languages.

Answer: 1200

There are more languages in the Austronesian family than in any other. The languages included are as diverse as Maori, Hawaiian, and Bahasa Indonesia.

Answer: English

English is the most irregular language known. With 283 irregular verbs, more than 10 different plural endings and over 100 prepositions, English, although the second most widely spoken language, is still in a class of its own.