Surprised Burmese doesn't beat Hakka. also would be fun to include other categories like nilo-saharan, austroasiatic, or native American to make it harder.
That would be cool! I can only think of two Nilo-Saharan languages off the top of my head so I'd struggle. Though it looks like this quiz is mainly sticking with true language families (descended from a common ancestor) and native American languages are not a true family. Nilo-Saharan might not be either, but it sounds like there's some evidence. Austroasiatic is pretty well supported though. Also I'm not a linguist lol.
True, but if you're doing this using a mental map, that's a tough one. Similarly, the fifth Dravidian language was tough. Or maybe that's not the right way to put it - I'd never heard of it. Until recently, there were four Dravidian states - each with a different main language.
The Dravidian languages, a bit unfortunately, have a "Big Four". These four are recognized by the government, have their own states, and are considered classical languages. They are also sometimes known as the literary languages, but there are a few more languages in that category. These languages combined have 239M speakers, the vast majority of the whole family's 250M speakers. As for the other 80 or so languages in the family, they are mostly endangered, making it quite a sad situation for the family overall.
Great quiz. Got more than I thought, but also missed a lot. Doesn't help to just think of languages spoken by lots of people, if not in the groups listed. Nominated
I sat there with the Celtic languages thinking, what is the adjective form of Brittany? Tried everything I could come up with before giving up, thinking it must be something else.
Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic are all Germanic languages and it makes literally no sense that Swedish is included but all other Scandinavian languages are omitted. And even less sense that Afrikaans is included but three out of four Scandinavian languages are nowhere to be found.
Swedish and Afrikaans have around 11 and 7 million speakers, number 4 and 5 after English, German and Dutch; and it makes no sense that Danish and Norwegian, with each have around 5.5 million speakers should been included among top 5. And even less sense to include Icelandic, with only 0.3 million speakers.
You should not accept "Scots" as a synonym for "Scottish Gaelic". Scots is a Germanic language (I tried it because I had forgotten about Afrikaans), quite close to English.
You may accept "Scots Gaelic", but just "Scots" isn't right.
You know theres more than four Uralic languages right
Udmurt
Komi
Moksha
Erzya
Nenets languages
Võro
Karelian
Veps
Ingrian
Nganasan
Khanty
Mansi
Just cause you don't like them doesn't mean they don't exist. Hell, it would've made more sense than Niger-Congo considering not only are they much less known but the existence of it as a family is still debated.
It's an East Slavic language related most closely to Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian. Also it's definitely Slavic lol, it's one of the prime examples used in comparative linguistics.
Some of the ones I missed felt painfully obvious once the answers were revealed (as usual) but I was genuinely surprised to find there aren't more Gujarati-speakers.
Belarusian, Indonesian (not the same as Bahasa melayu), bhojpuri, farsi, gujarati, thai, Japanese, korean, Vietnamese left out (no categories for them-- some fall in categories but are left out). Hokkien is bigger than Hakka.
43 out of 58 on the first try, I'm very happy with my overall knowlodge. I coincidentally just watched a small video about the fula people and I was so happy to get it here now.
*Misses German*
How am I so bad at this, I still get around 60% mostly???
4: mari. 5: udmurt. Both languages have more than ten times so many speakers than all sami languages together,.
You may accept "Scots Gaelic", but just "Scots" isn't right.
Udmurt
Komi
Moksha
Erzya
Nenets languages
Võro
Karelian
Veps
Ingrian
Nganasan
Khanty
Mansi
Just cause you don't like them doesn't mean they don't exist. Hell, it would've made more sense than Niger-Congo considering not only are they much less known but the existence of it as a family is still debated.
Also, great to see Dravidian languages on this quiz. Although I'm from that region, I've never heard of something called "Gondi".
Great quiz