Q 01/05

English is named after which Germanic people who migrated to Britain after Roman rule?

A) The Angles

B) The Saxons

C) The Jutes

D) The Frisians

Answer · why

A) The Angles

The Saxons and Jutes came with them, and their dialects together became Old English.

Q 02/05

To which branch of the Indo-European family does English belong?

A) North Germanic

B) Italic

C) Celtic

D) West Germanic

Answer · why

D) West Germanic

That puts it alongside Dutch, German and Frisian rather than the Scandinavian languages.

Q 03/05

English is the third most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese and which other?

A) Hindi

B) Arabic

C) Spanish

D) Portuguese

Answer · why

C) Spanish

Counting second-language speakers, it is the most spoken language in the world.

Q 04/05

Roughly how many English speakers worldwide did Ethnologue estimate as of 2021?

A) 800 million

B) 1.1 billion

C) 1.3 billion

D) 1.4 billion

Answer · why

D) 1.4 billion

There are more second-language speakers than native ones.

Q 05/05

English is an official language of how many sovereign states?

A) 63

B) 71

C) 57

D) 85

Answer · why

C) 57

Plus 30 dependent territories, making it the most geographically widespread language.