Ten questions on how language is put together, each with the origin or the plain-English translation of the term.
Most language knowledge arrives informally, which leaves people fluent in the thing but unfamiliar with its vocabulary. This quiz supplies the missing names: the word for a word that reads the same backwards, the word for a word that imitates a sound, the family English actually belongs to. It also covers scripts and borrowings, since almost no language stayed sealed off from its neighbours. The explanations give the root and the reason, which usually makes the term self-evident afterwards.
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: A. Mandarin Chinese
Why: Mandarin leads on native speakers by a wide margin. English leads on total speakers once second-language users are counted.
Answer: A. A palindrome
Why: The term comes from Greek roots meaning running back again. An anagram, by contrast, rearranges letters into something new.
Answer: A. Indo-European
Why: English sits in the Germanic branch of Indo-European, alongside German and Dutch. That family also contains Hindi, Greek, Russian and Spanish.
Answer: B. Cyrillic
Why: Cyrillic was developed in the ninth century and adapted from Greek letters. It is used across much of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Answer: D. Onomatopoeia
Why: Buzz, hiss and clang are standard examples. The sounds chosen vary by language, which is why animal noises differ across borders.
Answer: B. Etymology
Why: Etymology traces where words came from and how their meanings shifted. Entomology, easily confused with it, is the study of insects.
Answer: B. A loanword
Why: English is full of loanwords such as ballet, karaoke and algebra. A calque differs in that it translates the parts rather than borrowing the sound.
Answer: B. Books
Why: It gives us bibliography and bibliophile, and lies behind the word Bible. The root for life is bio, as in biology.
Answer: D. A constructed language
Why: It was designed in the 1880s by L. L. Zamenhof as a neutral second language. Its grammar was deliberately made regular, with no irregular verbs.
Answer: B. A vocabulary
Why: A lexicon is the full stock of words in a language or available to a speaker. The related word lexicography describes the writing of dictionaries.
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