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Identify the Language on the World Map

18 languages are highlighted on the map below. Can you correctly identify each one, based on a translated line of text?
All languages have been romanised, so that you can read them
Three words and their translations are highlighted throughout all languages, to give you a clue!
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Quiz by Jiaozira
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Last updated: November 23, 2022
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First submittedNovember 6, 2021
Times taken36,910
Average score66.7%
Rating5.00
8:45
0
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Select Answer
Al-bariha dhahaba 'iilaa wazifatih libina'i sayaaratin hamraa'a.
Ayer fue a su trabajo para construir un auto rojo.
Dün kırmızı bir araba yapmak için işine gitti.
Eilen hän meni työpaikalleen rakentamaan punaista autoa.
Eoje geuneun ppalgan chaleul mandeulgi wihae jigjang-e gassda.
Gestern ging er zu seiner Arbeit, um ein rotes Auto zu bauen.
Gisteren ging hij naar zijn werk om een rode auto te bouwen.
Hier, il est allé à son travail pour construire une voiture rouge.
Í gær fór hann í vinnuna sína að smíða rauðan bíl.
I nehinei ua hele ʻo ia i kāna hana e hana i kaʻa ʻulaʻula.
Ieri è andato al suo lavoro per costruire una macchina rossa.
Jana alienda kazini kwake kujenga gari jekundu.
Kal voh laal rang ki gaadi banaane apne kaam par gaya tha.
Kinō kare wa akai kuruma o tsukuru tame ni shigoto ni ikimashita.
Vchera on poshel na rabotu, chtoby postroit' krasnuyu mashinu.
Wczoraj poszedł do swojej pracy, aby zbudować czerwony samochód.
Yesterday, he went to his job to build a red car.
Zuótiān tā qù shàngbān qù zào yí liàng hóngsè de qìchē.
This Answer is:
+47
Level 70
Nov 6, 2021
I know that some people prefer the languages to be in their original script, but I have given the romanised versions so you can compare each and every language's words/imagine how they might sound.

I also chose three words to highlight. In retrospect, it would have been nice to highlight a verb so that you can appreciate the sentence structure better (i.e. SVO vs SOV languages).

Also, I had to get rid of the Americas so that the map could fit better (sorry!)

Hope you enjoy, and let me know if you spot any translation errors or if you need more time!

+1
Level 70
Jun 27, 2022
In case you want more of a challenge :)

Identify the Highlighted Language on the World Map #2

+2
Level 71
Nov 7, 2021
Nice quiz! Perhaps somewhat embarrassingly, the only one I missed was Hindi :P
+1
Level 70
Nov 7, 2021
Thank you! Hindi can be a hard one to guess, especially since the example sentence doesn't contain many aspirated consonants (which I feel is probably the defining feature of Hindi).
+4
Level 43
Nov 7, 2021
Nominated for sure! Amazing work from you! Sadly no Portuguese ;-; lol
+2
Level 70
Nov 7, 2021
Thank you MG17! There were already enough Romance languages, but don't worry, I have plans to include Portuguese in a sequel version :D
+2
Level 43
Nov 7, 2021
Don’t worry! And you can’t call me MG btw :)
+1
Level 70
Nov 7, 2021
Cool, sounds good MG!
+3
Level 57
Nov 7, 2021
Wow, great quiz! Nominated!
+1
Level 70
Nov 8, 2021
Thank you for the support!
+3
Level 87
Nov 8, 2021
Another excellent quiz
+1
Level 70
Nov 8, 2021
Many thanks :D
+4
Level 65
Nov 8, 2021
Amazing!
+1
Level 70
Nov 9, 2021
Thank you!
+2
Level 64
Nov 10, 2021
Cool concept! I saw a word starting with "dh" and assumed it had to be Hindi. Oops.
+1
Level 70
Nov 11, 2021
Thank you! I imagine a lot of people will confuse Arabic and Hindi (or Swahili and Hindi).
+2
Level 70
Mar 25, 2022
On a side note, traditionally that 'dh' sound (ذ) in Arabic is pronounced the same as English 'th' (as in father) although in many dialects it sounds like English 'd' or 'z'. Many Indo-Aryan languages distinguish regular stop consonants with breathy/aspirated stop consonants which is why you will see 'ph', 'dh', 'th', 'bh' when people write Hindi in the Latin script.

It's a shame my Hindi example didn't incorperate this!

+2
Level 50
Aug 20, 2022
Funny, I found the multiple romance languages and the multiple Germanic languages the hardest. The others were more different from each other.
+6
Level 70
Nov 13, 2021
Thank you for the spotlight, cheers :D
+4
Level 74
Nov 13, 2021
Nominated :)
+2
Level 70
Nov 13, 2021
much appreciated! :D
+3
Level 76
Nov 13, 2021
Nice! Nominated. Pleased to get all of them because the final 6 were a bit tricky.
+1
Level 70
Nov 14, 2021
Thank you for the nomination :)

Outside of a few easier guesses, like French or German, a quiz format like this gets very hard, very fast!

+2
Level 76
Feb 13, 2022
excellent quiz, lots of fun.

would appreciate one more minute still.

also, the blue colour highlighting the equivalents of 'yesterday' is a bit hard to see in dark mode, although i don't know what you could pick that would be better. the pink and the red are fine

+3
Level 70
Feb 13, 2022
Thank you! I always appreciate feedback. I tinkered with the colour a little, and I think I found a good compromise which is legible in both modes. I also added some more time :)
+2
Level 65
Feb 18, 2022
All correct on the first go :) Great quiz!
+1
Level 70
Feb 18, 2022
Well done, thanks for playing :D
+2
Level 49
Apr 13, 2022
Great quiz, would've been better if they were all in original script
+7
Level 70
Apr 13, 2022
Thank you! The reason I don't do that is because there are plenty of quizzes on Jetpunk where you guess the script. The Romanisation gives everyone a chance to figure out (or at least guess) what each language could sound like on a level playing field and make deductions from there.
+3
Level 54
Apr 24, 2022
very interesting quiz, though for arabic i think "Albariha thahaba 'ilaa wadhifatihi libina'i sayaaratin hamraa'a" is more accurate, though ask 3 people to romanize the same sentence in arabic and you get 4 different answers lol.
+2
Level 70
Apr 25, 2022
That is very true hahaha, this is why it is so much better to write Arabic in the original Arabic script. I changed my sentence by the way, thanks for the translation :)
+3
Level 65
Apr 28, 2022
Only 4? In Telugu if you ask 2 people you'll get about 40 probably.
+7
Level 69
Apr 28, 2022
I think you made the right decision to provide all languages in Latin script- otherwise some languages would be too easy to guess just based on the script alone!
+3
Level 70
Apr 29, 2022
Yes it certainly would change the dynamic of the quiz. Also, it then becomes unfair to multiple languages with the same script without it becoming a guessing game for a majority of quiztakers! :)
+2
Level 63
Apr 28, 2022
Got them all but it was tricky. It would've been too easy with the right script but like this it was more challenging. just how i like it
+3
Level 84
Jun 27, 2022
Phenomenal quiz! I really enjoyed it, and hope that there are more like this in the future!
+1
Level 70
Jun 27, 2022
Thank you! I made a sequel which I pinned in the grey comment above :D

I won't make any more in this series, as it is getting too difficult. I may make more specialised versions by continent however.

+2
Level 86
Jun 27, 2022
English, the Romance languages, and the East Asian languages I got easily. German/Dutch and Russian/Polish were 50-50 shots. The rest was educated guesses. With a little luck, I managed to pull out a 100% Nice quiz!
+1
Level 70
Jun 27, 2022
Thank you, educated guesses and some luck ought to do it :)
+3
Level 88
Jun 27, 2022
Fun quiz. I think I would have done better had the translations not been romanised, I'm more used to seeing most of these languages in their own texts.
+2
Level 88
Jun 27, 2022
Awesome quiz, thank you, @Jiaozira! I can only imagine how much work you put into making it. 😊
+2
Level 70
Jun 27, 2022
Thank you for playing :D

I made the baseline map for another quiz which didn't get released, so this was a good way to recycle that.

+2
Level 56
Jun 27, 2022
Lovely quiz. It was so hard to tell Chinese and Korean apart so I went on a whim and luckily got them right :D
+3
Level 85
Jun 27, 2022
Just remember Chinese has the tone markers.
+6
Level 70
Jun 27, 2022
A strategy I recommend is to look for patterns in the letters and match it up to cities from that language.

For example the Korean writing has lots of 'eu's and this reminds me of names like Seoul. I find this helps with unfamiliar languages.

+1
Level 56
Jul 22, 2022
Good thinking
+2
Level 81
Aug 21, 2022
Seoul doesn't have 'eu' though. It does, however, have an 'eo'.
+1
Level 70
Aug 21, 2022
You're right I always see the 'ou' like in French where it makes a 'u' sound, haha.
+2
Level 72
Feb 6, 2024
I managed to get Korean right for that reason exactly. The highlighted noun "jigjang" is very distinctively East Asian, and the vowel patterns in "geuneun" and "chaleul" reminded me of cities like Daejeon and Incheon, they have a lot of double vowels.
+4
Level 82
Jun 27, 2022
I rarely just comment for compliments, but I really enjoyed this one!
+2
Level 70
Jun 27, 2022
I'm really glad to hear that, thanks for playing :D
+1
Level 85
Jun 27, 2022
Hôm qua anh ây đã đi làm để chế tạo một chiếc ô tô màu đỏ.
+3
Level 76
Jun 28, 2022
I think a better German translation would be "zu seiner Arbeit" instead of "zu seinem Job". "job" is not wrong, but there's a slight difference in usage, and I think "Arbeit" would be more accurate in this case. Source: I'm German.
+2
Level 70
Jun 28, 2022
Got it, I've updated the translation. Thanks for the heads up!
+3
Level 80
Jun 28, 2022
Great idea and implementation, thank you! The highlighting of words is particularly nice. Interesting, that "yesterday" comes at the beginning in all languages.
+1
Level 70
Jun 28, 2022
Thanks for playing :D

I chose to highlight some of the words, in order to ground people in their detective work.

The words can be moved around in many (perhaps all) of these languages, although some languages are more flexible with this than others.

+4
Level 82
Jun 28, 2022
This was awesome! I hope we see more :)
+1
Level 70
Jun 28, 2022
Thank you! I made a sequel in the pinned comment above :)
+3
Level 68
Jun 28, 2022
Awesome quiz! 18/18 first try, Geoguessr skills came in handy haha
+1
Level 70
Jun 29, 2022
Haha this brings back nightmares trying to distinguish Croatian and Czech in the last seconds of a competitive game :)
+2
Level 66
Jun 29, 2022
I have no idea how I got 18/18 on the 1st try with 4:33 secs left!
+2
Level 79
Jul 4, 2022
Very nice quiz. Need to try the sequel right away!
+1
Level 58
Aug 9, 2022
How 5% got english wrong? The whole quiz is in english!
+2
Level 88
Sep 29, 2022
Probably by clicking the wrong thing by accident. I've done that many a time when playing this quiz format.
+2
Level 67
Aug 20, 2022
This quiz was a lot easier than I expected. I only got Chinese and Korean the wrong way around.
+1
Level 70
Aug 20, 2022
I'm glad to hear it wasn't too difficult :)
+2
Level 74
Aug 20, 2022
This is one of the best quizzes on this site!
+1
Level 70
Aug 20, 2022
Thanks for playing, I'm very happy to hear that :D
+3
Level 82
Aug 20, 2022
Cool quiz, and very good call putting all the languages in their Romanized scripts and being consistent about that choice unlike some other quizzes.
+2
Level 70
Aug 20, 2022
Thank you! I find it's a little too simple if they're in their original scripts :)
+2
Level 29
Aug 20, 2022
much easier than i thought, just didnt get tamil and swahili.
+2
Level 65
Aug 20, 2022
Cool! I'd love to have an extended edition of this.
+2
Level 66
Aug 20, 2022
That was a lot of fun, thank you. What a cool idea & implementation.
+1
Level 70
Aug 20, 2022
I'm glad you enjoyed it, thank you!
+2
Level 84
Aug 21, 2022
This is a great quiz, Jiaozira! It looks intimidating at first, but gradually you find ways to figure it out (the various colors are very helpful). Thanks for your great work!
+1
Level 70
Aug 22, 2022
Thank you Dug! It is a slightly different approach to a map quiz so it makes me happy to see feedback like this :)
+2
Level 44
Aug 21, 2022
Great quiz but needs clearer instructions. I accidentally clicked on one of the texts before I realised how to answer the quiz and got English wrong :D
+1
Level 70
Aug 22, 2022
Thanks for the feedback, I'll think over the instructions and how I can make it clearer.
+2
Level 50
Aug 22, 2022
Very enjoyable quiz. I think it was a good decision to romanize the scripts, otherwise it would have been too easy.
+1
Level 70
Aug 22, 2022
Thanks! In my opinion, the Latin alphabet is a friendly way to get acquainted with the language :)
+2
Level 65
Aug 22, 2022
Why highlight countries on the map in black when the standard on Jetpunk is blue? Almost a contradiction in terms to use black.
+1
Level 70
Aug 22, 2022
I chose black because the map is admittedly a bit colourful, so I want the highlighted region to stand out better.
+1
Level 92
Sep 22, 2022
This tripped me up at first, I saw UK/Australia as black, and thought they were invalid choices for the quiz, but was confused with the Union Flag displayed.
+2
Level 60
Aug 22, 2022
Haha! 100%, first try. Admittedly guessing the second half of the quiz, can't believe I managed that.
+1
Level 70
Aug 22, 2022
Congrats, it's a good feeling when everything lines up like that :D
+2
Level 62
Aug 23, 2022
Fun quiz! Only caught out by Korea🙈
+1
Level 28
Aug 27, 2022
I... I somehow only got English and French wrong
+1
Level 46
Oct 5, 2022
I missed everything but the Korean one on the first try. I confused it with the Tanzanian (Swahili?) one.
+1
Level 73
Nov 5, 2022
This was so much fun!
+1
Level 67
Nov 7, 2022
I got them all, my only doubts were the languages from Tanzania, Koreas and India, but the few features I knew about korean and swahili (?) were enough to guess them correctly.
+2
Level 60
Nov 22, 2022
In Chinese, "shàng bān" functions as a verb, meaning "to go to work", not as a noun as the other ones do. Also phonetically it would make more sense to put "yí liàng" instead of "yī liàng", as that character's tone depends on the following character's tone.
+1
Level 70
Nov 23, 2022
I changed the tone, I never knew this about Mandarin but it is interesting. As for the verb, I agree it's by no means a great linguistic choice to highlight it in blue however for consistency I believe it is the best option (other than finding a new word to highlight).
+1
Level 50
Dec 12, 2022
18/18!!
+2
Level 59
Feb 16, 2023
18/18! Tho, I came from doing this in Polish to the original creator.
+2
Level 74
Jun 6, 2023
It's interesting how you can identify the way a language looks or sounds without actually understanding it.
+1
Level 69
Jul 24, 2023
PLEASE DO MORE OF THESE WITH DIFFERENT SENTENCES
+1
Level 58
Aug 26, 2023
Mixed up hawaian and swahili.
+2
Level 61
Oct 3, 2023
I guess this is my new favourit quiz on this site.
+1
Level 70
Oct 3, 2023
I'm glad you liked it SaintCity! :)
+1
Level 47
Feb 1, 2024
17/18. You just have to eliminate the ones you know and go from there.