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Top Five Languages by Language Family

Guess the five languages with the most native speakers in each of the language families below.
Indo-European languages are separated
The Uralic languages are only three because there are no clear data
For 2019 according to Ethnologue. Source. Some common sense modifications are made.
Quiz by Aaron197
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Last updated: February 28, 2020
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First submittedFebruary 28, 2020
Times taken33,234
Average score48.3%
Rating4.99
6:00
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Romance
Spanish
Portuguese
French
Italian
Romanian
 
Sino-Tibetan
Mandarin
Wu
Cantonese
Min Nan
Hakka
Turkic
Turkish
Uzbek
Azerbaijani
Kazakh
Uyghur
 
Afroasiatic
Arabic
Hausa
Amharic
Oromo
Somali
Niger-Congo
Yoruba
Igbo
Swahili
Fula
Kinyarwanda
 
Slavic
Russian
Polish
Ukrainian
Serbo-Croatian
Czech
Germanic
English
German
Dutch
Swedish
Afrikaans
 
Dravidian
Telugu
Tamil
Kannada
Malayalam
Gondi
Indo-Iranian
Hindi
Bengali
Punjabi
Marathi
Urdu
 
Celtic
Welsh
Breton
Irish
Scottish Gaelic
Cornish
Austronesian
Javanese
Malay
Sundanese
Tagalog
Cebuano
 
Uralic
Hungarian
Finnish
Estonian
(Sami Languages)
+6
Level 67
Aug 17, 2021
Nominated! This quiz is amazing
+3
Level 75
Jan 1, 2022
Great quiz
+6
Level 74
Jan 2, 2022
Great quiz. Got more than I thought I would, although it took a while to come up with some of them.
+1
Level 70
Jan 2, 2022
Awesome! Nominated. Can you add "Bretton"? I thought the T was repeated by analogy to Brittany.
+5
Level 64
Jan 3, 2022
*misses English*

*Misses German*

How am I so bad at this, I still get around 60% mostly???

+1
Level 52
May 20, 2022
I completely forget Russian
+1
Level 68
Jun 20, 2022
Great!
+4
Level 50
Jun 20, 2022
Surprised Burmese doesn't beat Hakka. also would be fun to include other categories like nilo-saharan, austroasiatic, or native American to make it harder.
+1
Level 69
Dec 25, 2022
That would be cool! I can only think of two Nilo-Saharan languages off the top of my head so I'd struggle. Though it looks like this quiz is mainly sticking with true language families (descended from a common ancestor) and native American languages are not a true family. Nilo-Saharan might not be either, but it sounds like there's some evidence. Austroasiatic is pretty well supported though. Also I'm not a linguist lol.
+3
Level 75
Aug 26, 2022
Very fun! I thought Afrikaans was very tricky. Apparently half of the people who've taken this quiz didn't!
+5
Level 48
Oct 15, 2022
If the fifth biggest Germanic language is not Danish nor Norwegian, there is only one left possibility, what it can be...
+4
Level 75
Oct 15, 2022
True, but if you're doing this using a mental map, that's a tough one. Similarly, the fifth Dravidian language was tough. Or maybe that's not the right way to put it - I'd never heard of it. Until recently, there were four Dravidian states - each with a different main language.
+1
Level 65
Nov 30, 2023
The Dravidian languages, a bit unfortunately, have a "Big Four". These four are recognized by the government, have their own states, and are considered classical languages. They are also sometimes known as the literary languages, but there are a few more languages in that category. These languages combined have 239M speakers, the vast majority of the whole family's 250M speakers. As for the other 80 or so languages in the family, they are mostly endangered, making it quite a sad situation for the family overall.
+1
Level 71
Aug 26, 2022
Great quiz. Got more than I thought, but also missed a lot. Doesn't help to just think of languages spoken by lots of people, if not in the groups listed. Nominated
+1
Level 75
Sep 28, 2022
True, although that's how I missed Afrikaans.
+2
Level 80
Sep 20, 2022
I sat there with the Celtic languages thinking, what is the adjective form of Brittany? Tried everything I could come up with before giving up, thinking it must be something else.
+2
Level 63
Sep 25, 2022
Agh, I put Bahasa Malay and not just Malay
+2
Level 75
Sep 28, 2022
Excellent quiz, this is a real weak spot for me so it's time to learn...
+6
Level 67
Oct 9, 2022
Uralic:

4: mari. 5: udmurt. Both languages have more than ten times so many speakers than all sami languages together,.

+1
Level 56
Oct 15, 2022
Could you accept indonesian and bahasa for malay?
+1
Level 68
Oct 15, 2022
Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic are all Germanic languages and it makes literally no sense that Swedish is included but all other Scandinavian languages are omitted. And even less sense that Afrikaans is included but three out of four Scandinavian languages are nowhere to be found.
+13
Level 67
Oct 15, 2022
Swedish and Afrikaans have around 11 and 7 million speakers, number 4 and 5 after English, German and Dutch; and it makes no sense that Danish and Norwegian, with each have around 5.5 million speakers should been included among top 5. And even less sense to include Icelandic, with only 0.3 million speakers.
+8
Level 83
Oct 15, 2022
Swedish and Afrikaans are included because they have more speakers than Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic. Re-read the quiz description.
+2
Level 66
Oct 15, 2022
Manx doesn't make the fifth place?
+2
Level 48
Oct 15, 2022
So Bahasa Indonesia is considered as part of Malay language?
+1
Level 76
Oct 15, 2022
Very challenging, and very fun.
+10
Level 67
Oct 16, 2022
You should not accept "Scots" as a synonym for "Scottish Gaelic". Scots is a Germanic language (I tried it because I had forgotten about Afrikaans), quite close to English.

You may accept "Scots Gaelic", but just "Scots" isn't right.

+1
Level 68
Oct 16, 2022
Absolutely true.
+1
Level 70
Oct 18, 2022
ugh i wrote cornwallish because i knew they were celtic but didn't know what they spoke
+4
Level 57
Nov 2, 2022
You know theres more than four Uralic languages right

Udmurt

Komi

Moksha

Erzya

Nenets languages

Võro

Karelian

Veps

Ingrian

Nganasan

Khanty

Mansi

Just cause you don't like them doesn't mean they don't exist. Hell, it would've made more sense than Niger-Congo considering not only are they much less known but the existence of it as a family is still debated.

+4
Level 83
Feb 11, 2023
Have you tried reading the title and description?
+1
Level 20
May 12, 2023
Russian isn't Slavic. Russian is a Ugro-Finnish language
+3
Level 23
Sep 6, 2023
It's an East Slavic language related most closely to Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian. Also it's definitely Slavic lol, it's one of the prime examples used in comparative linguistics.
+1
Level 45
Aug 3, 2023
Didn't let me type sudanese, is this an error?
+1
Level ∞
Aug 3, 2023
Sundanese is a language spoken in Indonesia, nothing to do with Sudan.
+1
Level 71
Aug 9, 2023
needs to be longer than 6 minutes, like 10 minutes
+1
Level 44
Aug 25, 2023
'Irish' is also called Gaelic
+2
Level 62
Nov 28, 2023
I'm a little confused, I thought Swahili didn't really have native speakers?
+1
Level 50
Dec 4, 2023
It has a lot of native speakers in Kenya and Tanzania I think.
+1
Level 76
Jan 2, 2024
Nice! How about adding a 'none of the above' top 5? That would be Japanese etc