Languages are not fixed objects. They split, merge, get invented and get lost.
Every language is a snapshot of an ongoing process. Populations separate and their speech drifts apart until the varieties stop being mutually intelligible; groups without a shared language improvise one, and their children turn that improvisation into something with full grammar. At the other end, languages disappear — usually not because anyone forbids them but because speakers find it advantageous to raise children in a dominant one. These questions cover the mechanisms at both ends, and the one substantial case of a language brought back.
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
Play it insteadAnswer: D. A simplified language that develops between groups with no common tongue
Why: Pidgins have limited vocabulary and simplified grammar, and crucially, nobody speaks one as a first language.
Answer: C. It has native speakers and a full grammar
Why: When children grow up with a pidgin around them they systematise it, producing a complete language within a generation.
Answer: B. Hebrew
Why: It remained in liturgical use for centuries without being anyone's daily language, then was deliberately revived from the late nineteenth century.
Answer: A. Speakers shift to a dominant language for advantage
Why: The pattern is generational: parents who speak it raise children in the dominant language, and the last fluent generation ages out.
Answer: D. Speakers cannot understand each other
Why: Mutual intelligibility is the linguistic test, though politics frequently overrides it — the line is often drawn by borders rather than by grammar.
Answer: C. Has no demonstrated relationship to any other language
Why: Basque is the best-known European example, surviving surrounded by Indo-European languages with no established relatives.
Answer: B. Comparing systematic sound correspondences between related languages
Why: Regular correspondences across many words indicate common descent. Proto-Indo-European was reconstructed this way with no surviving records.
Answer: A. A regular set of consonant shifts in the Germanic languages
Why: It explains why Latin "pater" corresponds to English "father" — the same shift applies systematically across the vocabulary.
Answer: D. About half
Why: Estimates vary with the definition, but a large share have few speakers and no children learning them.
Answer: C. Full natural languages with their own grammar
Why: They arise naturally in deaf communities, differ between countries, and have grammatical structures independent of the surrounding spoken language.
A Germanic language wearing a French coat and carrying a Latin dictionary. Why English spelling is a mess with reasons.
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