Thank You Around the World Trivia Quiz

Answer: French

With the Norman conquest in 1066, Norman French became the language of the nobility in England. French was to continue to reign supreme until King John lost possesion of the province of Normandy to the French king in the beginning of the 13th century. This began a decline of French usage in England, and by the mid 1300s both nobles and commoners were speaking the same language.

Answer: Spanish

Spanish is a truly international language. It is even spoken in Turkey, where a medieval form of Spanish is being kept alive by Spanish Jews who were exiled from Spain over five hundred years ago.

Answer: German

One of my favorite scenes from the movie, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" is when he sings "Danke schön". Rent the video and check it out some time.

Answer: Italian

Italian is the closest relative to Latin, the language of Ancient Rome. By the way, can you name all the languages spoken today that are derived from Latin? They are Italian, French, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Romansch (spoken in Switzerland), and Romanian.

Answer: Portuguese

Sounds like the Japanese word for thank you, "arigato". Actually, quite a few terms in Japanese can be traced back to Portuguese. Tempura, the famous Japanese dish came from the Portuguese word, "temporas". The Portuguese were the first westerners to visit Japan.

Answer: Dutch

The number 888 in Dutch, is said to be almost impossible for non-natives to pronounce correctly. Dutch seems to be a halfway point between German and English. "Yankee" is derived from the Dutch name, "Janke", a variant version of "Jan".

Answer: Mongolian

Being an avid mountain biker, I have always dreamed of cycling in Mongolia which to me seems like the most exotic place in the world.

Answer: Cambodian

Cambodian or Khmer is a member of the Australasian language group. Although this family contains over 200 languages, of these only Cambodian and Vietnamese are recognized as national languages. Cambodian has had it own writing system for many centuries and the historical significance of the language cannot be overlooked.

Answer: Russian

The Russian Cyrillic alphabet is named after St. Cyril. It has a total of 33 letters.

Answer: Serbian

Often called Serbo/Croat, the languages are now growing apart due to Yugoslavia's breaking up in the early 1990s. Serbian uses the Cyrillic alphabet and Croation uses the Roman script.

Answer: Polish

Polish is similar to Russian but unlike that language, it uses the Roman alphabet instead of the Cyrillic script. This is due to the fact that Poles were converted to Christianity by missionaries from Western Christendom - and to the continued influence of the Roman Catholic church. Do you want to take a shot at a Polish tongue twister? Try, "W Szcebrzeszynie chrzaszcz brzmi w trzcinie". Don't ask me how to pronounce it.

It means something like, "In Szcebrzeszynie, the beetle is crying in reeds".

Answer: Hungarian

Those Magyars say it like "kuh suh num". Hungarian is related to none of its neighboring languages. It belongs to the same language group as Finnish and Estonian.

Answer: Romanian

It is pronounced "mool tsoo mesk". Romanian, although almost surrounded by Slavic languages like Bulgarian and Ukrainian, is actually a member of the Romance language family. Hence the name, "Romanian". It was written with the Cyrillic alphabet from around 1521 to the 1860s when it changed to the Latin script.

Answer: Greek

"Nike", pronounced "nee kee" is also Greek. It means victory.

Answer: Turkey

Sounds like, "teh shek kur eh deh rim". In the past one could travel from the Balkans to Beijing and hear Turkic languages being used all along the route. Turkish was originally written in the Arabic script but nowadays in the interest of modernization and simplicity, it is written in the Roman alphabet. This change was initiated by the great Turkish leader, Kemal Atatürk, in 1928.

Answer: Hebrew

Hebrew is an ancient language that was revitalized as a spoken, colloquial language by Jewish settlers in what was formerly Palestine and by the formation of Israel in 1948. It is a linguistic descendant of Aramaic. The Hebrew script is derived from the Phoenician alphabet and is written right to left.

Answer: Arabic

Do you know any Arabic? Sure you do. Algebra, cipher, alcohol and even sugar are just a few of the many words we have borrowed from Arabic. How about "Tally Ho!"? Yep, that too. It comes from the Crusaders who picked up the Arabic, "Tala hon!" or come here!

Answer: Swahili

You would reply, "asante sana". If you want to learn more Swahili, check out the quiz in this same section by the author "jazzkickass".

Answer: Hindi

In Nepalese it is "tanyabad". However, I recall hearing this phrase when flying on Air India. Nepalese and Hindi are quite similar and share much of the same vocabulary. A few of the Hindi based words we use in English are, khaki, bungalow, punch ( the drink), and thug.

Answer: Chinese

Chinese has seven different main dialects which in fact are more like separate languages, mutually unintelligible to non-native speakers. Someone in Beijing, can't watch a Jackie Chan movie made in Cantonese, the dialect of Hong Kong, without Chinese character subtitles.

Answer: Korean

Korean grammar is very similar to Japanese grammar and a large portion of its vocabulary is the same as Japanese due to both languages borrowing heavily from Chinese. Learning Korean after having studied Japanese would be much easier than starting from scratch.

However in school, I found Korean pronunciation to be far more difficult than Japanese. A strange entry in the Korean dictionary I have, "uun chong ee", which refers to a horse with white testicles! Why would they have a word for that? Beats me!

Answer: Indonesia

Indonesian is very similiar to Malay spoken in Malaysia. Think of the relationship between Spanish and Portuguese, and you won't be far off.

Answer: Thai

That is what everyone says in my home city of Bangkok. Don't forget to add "khrap" if you are a man, and "ka" if you are a woman.

Answer: Vietnamese

Vietnamese is a tonal language with six separate tones. As far as language origin is concerned, it is similar in background to Cambodian. It is quite difficult to master. Originally, the Vietnamese used Chinese characters to write their language but changed over to a romanized script towards the end of the 19th century thanks to a French missionary.

Answer: Burmese

"Cheh zoo tin ba deh" is how you say it. Burma or Myanmar as it is now known, is a diverse country with many different ethnic groups that speak their own distinct languages. Burmese is in the same language group as Tibetan.