Ni Hao! (Hello in Mandarin ). China has a population of over one billion people, and a large number of these speak Mandarin Chinese. Greek and Chinese are two of the oldest living written languages still spoken in the world.
2. Bengali
Answer: Bangladesh
Nomoskar! (Hello in Bengali). Two hundred million people speak Bengali, around half of whom live in Bangladesh itself. Beside being known as the language, Bengali is also how the people of Bangladesh refer to themselves.
3. Dutch
Answer: Netherlands
Daag! (Hello in Dutch). Seventeen million people speak Dutch and twelve million of those people live in the Netherlands. Besides being the main language of the Netherlands, Dutch is spoken in parts of Aruba, Belgium, northern France, and Suriname.
4. English
Answer: Australia
Hello! Three hundred and forty million people speak English, and around one billion have English as their second language. English is the official language fifty other countries. The English language came from the Germanic tribes of Jutes, Angles, and Saxons. English has more words than any other language, but only one percent of English words are used on a daily basis.
5. Oriya
Answer: India
Namaskar! (Hello in Oriya). In the country of India there is a state known as Orissa, where the language of Oriya is spoken. Of the one billion people who live in India, thirty-one million of those people live in Orissa and speak Oriya.
6. Pashto
Answer: Afghanistan
Salam Aleikum! (Hello in Pashto). Over twenty-nine million people live in Afghanistan, of whom around one million speak Pashto. The language of Pashto comes from the Pashtun people. Dari is another language spoken in Afghanistan and is mostly used by the Tajiks.
7. Hebrew
Answer: Israel
Shalom! (Hello in Hebrew). Out of the seven million people that live in Israel, five million of those people speak Hebrew. After being captured by the Babylonians in 586 B.C., the Hebrew language began to fade and Aramaic took its place. Only when newspaper editor Eliezer Ben-Yehuda moved from Russia to Palestine in 1881 did people begin to speak Hebrew again.
8. Quechua
Answer: Bolivia
Raphi! (Hello in Quechua ). Of the nine million people that live in Bolivia, two million speak Quechua. Spanish and Aymaran are two more official languages spoken in Bolivia. Aymaran was a language spoken before the Spanish arrived in the area.
9. Welsh
Answer: Wales
Shwmae! (Informal hello in Welsh). Wales is a country that forms part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Although English is still the main language in Wales, the Welsh language has official status in the country, and is spoken by just under 20% of the population (around 550,000 out of a total of just over 3 million).
10. Xhosa
Answer: South Africa
Molo! (Hello in Xhosa). South Africa has 11 official languages, of which Xhosa is the second most widely spoken as a first language (Zulu being the first). South Africa has a population of around 49 million, around eight million of whom speak Xhosa.
This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor stedman before going online.
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