Languages of the World

What this quiz asks

• Afrikaans, spoken in South Africa and Namibia, developed mainly from which European language?
• Who created Esperanto, the best-known invented language meant for international use?
• This sacred syllable, Om, is shown here in which script, also used to write Hindi?
• In which Asian country is Portuguese an official language?
• The modern Greek alphabet has 24 letters.
• Which Korean king created the Hangul alphabet in the 15th century?
• Select ALL of these writing systems that are used to write Japanese.
• The words "tomato", "chocolate" and "avocado" came into English from which language of the Aztecs?
• Is American Sign Language closely related to British Sign Language?
• Which of these is one of the six official languages of the United Nations?
• How many letters are there in the modern Russian alphabet?
• Which language was spoken across the Inca Empire and is still used by millions in the Andes?
• Swahili is a Semitic language, closely related to Arabic.
• Select ALL of these European languages that are NOT Indo-European.
• Order these writing systems by when they first appeared, oldest first.
• Which living language still uses both of the old letters thorn (þ) and eth (ð)?
• Besides German, French and Italian, what is the fourth national language of Switzerland?
• Which official language of the European Union is Semitic, related to Arabic, yet written in the Latin alphabet?
• Sequoyah created a written syllabary for which Native American language?
• Who is credited with reviving Hebrew as an everyday spoken language in the late 19th century?