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Guess the Language from the Description

Answers range in difficulty from "general knowledge", to "amateur hobbyist", to "linguistics graduate degree". This quiz is not intended to be aceable, so don't worry about your score, feel free to skip whatever you don't know, and have fun! But still, I've given you plenty of time to Google if you want. ;) This is my first quiz on this site. Feedback is appreciated!
All languages are fair game, whether living or extinct, large or small.
Quiz by frogfacts
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Last updated: June 9, 2024
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First submittedMay 26, 2024
Times taken27
Average score36.0%
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Hint
Answer
I'm the language with the most native speakers.
Mandarin
I'm the language with the most non-native speakers.
English
I'm the language spoken by the majority of the population in the most countries.
Spanish
I'm the language to blame for the English spelling system.
French
Although I go by a different name and use a different writing system, I'm nearly identical to Hindi in most respects.
Urdu
I'm the oldest known written language.
Sumerian
I'm the language with the longest continuous written history.
Egyptian
I'm the language that first enabled linguists to decipher the Rosetta Stone.
Greek
I'm frequently considered the world's most-spoken language isolate, meaning I'm not known to be related to any other language.
Korean (feel free to argue about Jeju in the comments)
I'm the most-spoken language indigenous to Africa.
Hausa
I'm the most-spoken language indigenous to the Americas.
Guaraní
If you speak a language with an alphabet or other phonetic writing system, I'm the language whose alphabet yours is probably derived from.
Phoenician
I'm the most widely used language that was ever consciously invented. I even have a handful of native speakers!
Esperanto
I'm the classical language of the Aztec Empire, and I'm still spoken today by almost 2 million people.
Nahuatl
I'm a large language written in the Latin script who is particularly famous for my prolific use of diacritics.
Vietnamese
Although I'm widely spoken in parts of the Scandinavian Peninsula, I'm not closely related to any of the Nordic languages.
Finnish / Sami
I'm the Ethiopian language with the most native speakers.
Oromo
I'm often considered English's closest living relative, not counting Scots.
West Frisian
I'm the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism.
Avestan
I'm the first language that linguists ever reconstructed from prehistory.
Proto-Indo-European
I used to be the most widely distributed language in prewar Europe, stretching all the way from Russia to the UK.
Yiddish
I'm the only Mongolic language native to Europe.
Kalmyk
I'm the most-spoken creole language.
Haitian Creole
I'm the most-spoken creole language which is NOT based on a colonial European language.
Kituba
I'm the only Semitic language conventionally written in the Latin alphabet.
Maltese
I'm the only language known to use all four airstream mechanisms: pulmonic, ejective, implosive, and click. I'm also the only Afro-Asiatic language to use click consonants at all.
Dahalo
Although I'm an African language, my closest relatives are spoken in Indonesia.
Malagasy
I've been described as history's first "world language", and I was the most widely spoken language of the Middle East prior to the Arab conquests. (I'm also not extinct, despite what you may have heard!)
Aramaic
I'm a language featured prominently in the novel "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe.
Igbo
I'm spoken in the Arctic Circle all the way from Siberia to Greenland. I'm sometimes described as a single language with many dialects, and other times as a continuum of distinct but closely related languages.
Inuit
I'm the last remaining Paleo-European language.
Basque
Out of the 60+ languages taught by the U.S. Foreign Service, they consider me to be the most difficult to learn for a monolingual English speaker.
Japanese
I'm one of the few non-tonal Bantu languages, and I'm known for my large number of Arabic loanwords.
Swahili
After every indigenous language of Tasmania was driven to extinction by British Australian settlers, I'm a constructed language being developed by Aboriginal Tasmanians to preserve their cultural heritage.
palawa kani
I was once the main linguistic rival to Latin in the Italian Peninsula during the era of the Roman Republic.
Etruscan
I'm the language spoken by Asia's most populous stateless nation.
Kurdish
Although I was once the royal language of the Qing Dynasty, the final Chinese dynasty before the Republic of China, today I'm considered a critically endangered language.
Manchu
I'm a language with a unique writing system derived entirely from numerals.
Dhivehi
I'm the only language outside of Africa known to use click consonants.
Damin
I'm the language whose alphabet is often considered the most complex in the world.
Tibetan
I'm the most famous example of a "mixed language" among linguists.
Michif
I'm the national lingua franca of the world's most linguistically diverse country.
Tok Pisin
I'm the most successful case of language revitalization in history.
Hebrew
If you're a fan of gamelan music and elaborate puppet theater, I'm the language you should thank. (Two different answers are acceptable here.)
Javanese / Balinese
Translating to the "language of good", I'm a minimalistic artificial language that was designed to be exceedingly simple to use, easy to learn, and promote happiness.
Toki Pona
I'm an Amazonian language (in)famous among linguists for my many unusual features, particularly my alleged lack of syntactic recursion.
Pirahã
I'm an Austronesian language famous among linguists for my extensive use of metathesis.
Rotuman
I was a secret language (or "cant") used in England until the late 20th century to converse among a number of clandestine or low-status subcultures, including gay men, actors, showmen, wrestlers, sailors, sex workers, and criminals. My vocabulary was influenced by Yiddish, Romani, Gaelic, and Italian. Slang words like "butch", "camp" and "zhoosh" entered the English language because of me.
Polari
I'm the world's youngest known natural language. (Google me later, it's an incredible story.)
Nicaraguan Sign Language
I'm the language with the funniest name.
Libido
7 Comments
+2
Level 65
May 28, 2024
i know you mentioned it, but korean really isn't an isolate. basque would be a better suited answer
+1
Level 38
May 28, 2024
This is why I used the phrasing "frequently considered". The independent status of Jeju remains a contested issue. It is not considered a true isolate by recent surveys such as Campbell (2018: 6)'s "Language Isolates", who considers the isolate label to be inaccurate for Korean. But the claim remains widespread enough to be an accurate answer for the question posed.

This is similar to why I carefully chose the word "alleged" in the Pirahã question; Pirahã does not actually lack all forms of syntactic recursion, but the claim that it does is so widespread as to be notable.

+2
Level 65
May 28, 2024
that makes sense, it just took me a second because i don't usually think about it as one. also that is interesting that piraha does have syntactic recursion in certain cases, i had heard everywhere that it entirely lacked it!
+2
Level 65
May 28, 2024
but this is a fantastic quiz! nominated!
+1
Level 38
May 28, 2024
Thank you! :D
+2
Level 65
May 28, 2024
i would also adjust "west friesian", i tried "frisian" multiple times but it didn't work
+2
Level 38
May 28, 2024
Thank you for the kind words! I noticed the West Frisian typo last night and have edited it, it shows as "Frisian" in the quiz editor but for some reason it hasn't been updated in the quiz itself. It might take a while for the site to update the correct spelling.