World Languages

Name:

Date:

Instructions: How well do you know the languages of the world?

1.
What is the most spoken language in the world by total number of speakers?
A
Mandarin Chinese
B
Hindi
C
Spanish
D
English
2.
Which language uses the Cyrillic alphabet?
A
Russian
B
Hungarian
C
Turkish
D
Polish
3.
What is the official language of Brazil?
A
Brazilian
B
Portuguese
C
Spanish
D
French
4.
Which of these languages is written from right to left?
A
Thai
B
Arabic
C
Greek
D
Hindi
5.
How many official languages does the United Nations have?
A
5
B
8
C
4
D
6
6.
Which country has the most official languages?
A
Zimbabwe
B
Bolivia
C
India
D
South Africa
7.
What language family does Finnish belong to?
A
Uralic
B
Slavic
C
Germanic
D
Indo-European
8.
Which ancient language is considered the ancestor of French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese?
A
Celtic
B
Latin
C
Greek
D
Sanskrit
9.
What is the most widely spoken language in Africa?
A
Swahili
B
Amharic
C
Yoruba
D
Zulu
10.
Which language has the most letters in its alphabet?
A
Russian
B
Greek
C
Khmer (Cambodian)
D
Arabic
11.
What writing system does Japanese use that was borrowed from Chinese?
A
Romaji
B
Kanji
C
Katakana
D
Hiragana
12.
Which constructed language was created in 1887 with the goal of being an easy-to-learn universal second language?
A
Klingon
B
Elvish
C
Esperanto
D
Volapük
13.
Which of these languages is a tonal language, where pitch changes the meaning of words?
A
Korean
B
Mongolian
C
Japanese
D
Mandarin Chinese
14.
What is the oldest known written language still in use today?
A
Chinese
B
Hebrew
C
Greek
D
Tamil
15.
In which country would you most commonly hear the language Tagalog spoken?
A
Indonesia
B
Vietnam
C
Malaysia
D
Philippines

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