1. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited!

2. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Have you ever wondered… how children learn to speak?

3. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Have you wondered… how many languages it is possible to learn?

4. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! So many questions! There are many different questions about language. Here are some answers… can you match them up?

5. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! 1. What is the most polite language? A. Korean B. Turkish C. Chinese Answer: There are 7 levels of politeness which are used to show respect to the addressee. A. Korean

6. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! 2. What is the oldest writing system still in use? A. Korean B. Turkish C. Chinese This dates from around 1200 BC and although it has changed since then it is still used by millions of people. Answer: C. Chinese

7. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! 3. What seems to be the loudest language? A. Korean B. Turkish C. Chinese This was measured in a study in 1970 which set out to measure speakers over various distances. Answer: B. Turkish

8. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! 4. What is said to be the most frequently spoken word on the planet? A. The B. OK C. ilunga Answer: First coined as a joke in Boston newspapers and meaning oll korrekt (a conscious misspelling of "all correct") it is now commonly used and understood worldwide. B. OK

9. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! 5. What is said to be the most frequently word in English? A. The B. OK C. ilunga This is number one in the top 10 most frequent words in British English - as measured in the British National Corpus. Answer: A. The

10. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! What would have happened if you hadn’t learnt to speak as a child? Evidence from discoveries of ‘wild children’ suggest that if you hadn’t learnt your first language by the age of 13 you probably wouldn’t be able to learn after that.

11. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! How many languages is it possible for one person to learn? If you have the time any number! The most multilingual person still living is Ziad Fazah who speaks 58 languages.

12. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Ziad Fazah speaks all these languages: Albanian German Amharic Arabic Armenian Azeri Bengali Burmese Bulgarian Cambodian Cantonese Mandarin Wu Sinhalese Singapore English Korean Danish Dzongkha Spanish Finnish French Fijian Greek Hebrew Hindi Dutch Hungarian Indonesian English Icelandic Italian Japanese Swahili Lao Malay Malagasy Mongolian Nepali Norwegian Papiamento Persian Polish Portuguese Pashto Kyrgyz Romanian Russian Serbo-Croatian Swedish Tajik Thai Czech Tibetan Turkish Urdu Uzbek Vietnamese

13. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Does size matter? There are over 6,000 languages in the world, some with lots of speakers and some with very few speakers, some are in remote places and some stretch across the whole world.

14. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! 1. What is the BIGGEST language in the world (most speakers) A. English? B. Burumakok? C. Mandarin Chinese? Answer: This is generally agreed to top the list of most speakers with some 880 million first language speakers C. Mandarin

15. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! 2. What is one of the smallest language in the world (fewest speakers) A. English? B. Burumakok? C. Mandarin Chinese? Answer: Burumakok, in West Papua New Guinea, is spoken by fewer than 300 people B. Burumankok

16. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! 3. Which is the richest language A. English? B. Burumakok? C. Mandarin Chinese? Answer: English is spoken as a first language by the wealthiest economies A. English

17. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! 4. Which language has the most sounds? A. English? B. !Xũ? C. Kâte Answer: !Xũ is an African language which has 141 phonemes (a unit of sound that distinguishes meanings of words) including a large number of clicks B. !Xũ

18. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Fact or fiction? Many popular ‘facts’ about language are not necessarily true and many are still in dispute.

19. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Here are some ‘facts’ about language, can you spot which are true? Answer true or false Hint, some may be both!

20. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Languages can be dangerous! False True: Esperanto is an invented language that was banned in several countries by authoritarian regimes e.g. Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, China. True

21. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Languages can be bought and sold False True: in Vanuatu (South Pacific island) a community sold their language to their neighbours and couldn’t use it any more! True

22. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Languages never change False False: languages change all the time borrowing from each other, making up new words (as new things are invented), losing others as they go out of fashion! TrueFalse

23. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Languages can die False True: about 417 languages are under threat of extinction which means that they don’t have children among their speakers. True

24. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Languages can kill False True: big languages can kill smaller ones by being the language of education or by their speakers being more economically powerful. English, Spanish, Portuguese are the biggest killers! True

25. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! You can’t just make up a new language False False: new languages have been created, the most successful of these being Esperanto (an international language created in 1887). Klingon was made up for a TV programme. Do you know which one? TrueFalse

26. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Animals can’t learn to speak False True and false: chimps have been taught some language (especially sign language) but they don’t have the ability to pronounce human language. Birds can mimic human sounds e.g. parrots and lyrebirds, but they don’t understand what they are saying. True False

27. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Languages can solve crimes False True: criminals have been identified from their writing or speech. For example, the uncle of a murdered teenager was identified as her killer by text messages he sent from her phone (pretending to be her). True

28. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! English is the easiest language to learn False True and false: it is a matter of opinion only. English has been variously voted both easiest and hardest to learn. TrueFalseTrue

29. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Eskimos have up to 400 words for snow False False: this is known as the Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax which grew from a suggestion that there were four or more words for snow and the number kept getting bigger! There are probably no more than 15 words in fact and English has nearly that many! TrueFalse

30. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! Not all languages have separate words for ‘he’ and ‘she’ False True: Finnish ‘hän’ covers he and she and most African languages don’t make the distinction. True

31. ©Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studieslanguage unlimited! And there is much, much more As you can see languages are a big and interesting subject to study. And it is not just about learning new languages. It’s about finding the answers to many more questions about language.