Language topic

500. I would have recognised Bengali if it hadn't been with other options from India.
 
I'm quite sure we have.
Anyway, I got 700, but I got several European languages. I guessed Tamil, Urdu and Korean correctly, though.
 
I wished that Estonian would show up but it didn't :(.

Totally unrelated but I recently dreamt that a girl from my class was on the phone and spoke in fluent Swedish. And I was under the impression that she had become advanced in some other languages as well. 'Twas cool.
 
There are some hints in the sound clips, it pays off to listen to them until the end. For example, I figured it must be Hausa when they mentioned Boko Haram.
 
Guys, I could use a little help from someone who knows German well. I'd like to have a one-page text corrected (around 500 words). It's really simple pre-intermediate stuff, but I guess there are many mistakes, because I'm terrible at grammar. So if anybody's willing to help, please let me know and I'll share the details. ;)
 
Let's spice this thread up with a little quiz. Post your answers in spoilers, I'll give out the solutions on the weekend (Sunday or Monday, depending on the amount of takers).

1. Name the ten languages with the highest amount of native speakers in the world. You can try to rank them or guess the number of speakers if you're adventurous, but try figuring out the languages themselves first.
2. Name the extant branches of the Indo-European language family. I'm only asking for branches, not sub branches. e.g. it is sufficient to include "Germanic", no need to list "Western Germanic", "Northwestern Germanic", etc.
3. Which region has the highest amount, both relatively and absolutely, of languages spoken in the world? The region is very clearly defined geographically and easy to distinctly name.
4. Which country has the highest amount of official languages? How many are they?
5. How many alphabets or scripts are currently in official use worldwide? This question does not distinguish individual adaptations of an alphabet, so e.g. the English, French and Turkish variations of the Latin alphabet are counted as one single alphabet or script.
 
1. Name the ten languages with the highest amount of native speakers in the world. You can try to rank them or guess the number of speakers if you're adventurous, but try figuring out the languages themselves first.

I'd guess Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish, English, Vietnamese, Panjabi, Russian, French, Portuguese.

3. Which region has the highest amount, both relatively and absolutely, of languages spoken in the world? The region is very clearly defined geographically and easy to distinctly name.

This should be probably obvious, but I'm not sure. Among my guesses would be India, Nigeria, New Guinea or Indonesia.

Have to go to work, will think about it more later.
 
What is the scope of "region" in the context of question 3? Country? Part of a country? Part of a continent? Why not ask for a country? (It won't make the answer easy, suddenly would it? ;) ).

If it isn't country I say
Africa
.
 
The region in question isn't a unified country, and it's not a continent, so I thought the term 'region' would be fine. The beauty of it is that any political definitions do not matter, and there are no geographic uncertainties (i.e. no "northwestern this or that", no "cis/trans", nothing like it). The region is as clear cut in its geographical definition as it can be, there is an absolutely unambiguous name applied to it, and it is universally recognised as the region with the highest linguistic diversity in the world, accounting for ca. 15% of the world's spoken language.
 
Has to be Oceania then, Papua New Guinea's neighbouring islands are also incredibly diverse linguistically.
 
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