Q 01/05

Counting native and second-language speakers together, which language has the most speakers in the world?

A) Mandarin Chinese

B) Spanish

C) Hindi-Urdu

D) English

Answer · why

D) English

Ethnologue puts English near 1.5 billion total speakers; Mandarin leads on native speakers alone, with close to a billion.

Q 02/05

Which language has the most native (first-language) speakers in the world?

A) Mandarin

B) Spanish

C) English

D) Hindi

Answer · why

A) Mandarin

Nearly a billion people grow up speaking it; Spanish is usually second on native speakers, and Hindi third on total speakers.

Q 03/05

Roughly how many living languages are there in the world, according to most estimates?

A) 1,500 to 2,500

B) 5,000 to 7,000

C) 9,000 to 11,000

D) 15,000 to 20,000

Answer · why

B) 5,000 to 7,000

Consensus is grim about their future: between 50 and 90 percent of the languages spoken in 2000 are expected to be extinct by 2100.

Q 04/05

Which country, with about 840 living languages, is the most linguistically diverse on Earth?

A) The Republic of India

B) Indonesia

C) Papua New Guinea

D) Nigeria and Cameroon

Answer · why

C) Papua New Guinea

Its official languages are English, Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu and PNG Sign Language; most of the 840 have only a few thousand speakers.

Q 05/05

Which language of the western Pyrenees is Europe's only known language isolate?

A) Hungarian

B) Maltese

C) Albanian

D) Basque

Answer · why

D) Basque

About 806,000 people speak Euskara, more than 90 percent of them on the Spanish side; Hungarian and Maltese have relatives, however distant.