It's a technicality, english is not the official language so not to pick favourites but then you are picking a De Facto favourite. Bolivia, South Africa and many others are doing exactly the same thing with the opposite approach, all their languages are official not to leave anyone out but spanish is de facto in Bolivia and specific provinces in South Africa have one language above all else, in any case Canada would be a good example English and French are official and every person in the country speaks one or the other or both and then all official communication is done in both.
Not everyone in Canada speaks French or English. And there are probably people in South Africa and Bolivia who do not speak any of the recognized official languages there, as well. Giving a language "official" status doesn't really accomplish anything, but it does give more weight to the protests of ornery racist nativists who love to say things like "learn the language or get out of the country!!" When the United States was formed there were many people living within its borders whose native language was German or Dutch or something else. There was no point in marginalizing those people by declaring that English was the most prestigious language and ethnicity of the country, just like there's no reason to publicly and officially marginalize speakers of Spanish, Chinese or Arabic today.
I live in Canada and know people who speak neither English nor French. Also I think we need to make Aboriginal languages official, (such as Cree and Ojibway), in my opinion. Or at least Inuktitut as that is what majority of Nunavummiut (people from Nunavut) speaks.
Bad baby: why would you assume that? English is my native language and I'm quite proficient at using it. I am sometimes slightly annoyed at the efforts of the historically ignorant nativists who seek to undermine the beauty of the country that was founded on ideas like equality, democracy, and pluralism... but their efforts have rarely done anything to negatively impact me personally and directly.
Also my family has roots in the United States going back 15,000+ years, to Cherokee who originally settled the land, to English and German farmers who colonized Virginia in the 16th century, and to the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth. Anyone glancing at me would assume I was "white."
But... I honestly don't know what you are implying so my guess work in responding to it could be totally off. A little help?
^That's extremely debatable, I've seen reports suggesting the opposite, and also that both have changed equally. It's very difficult to know when you don't have a spoken record.
Cao: I wasn't being rude and I didn't say what you said I said.
tshalla: you are usually not worth responding to, and your comment here is predictably obnoxious, but yes you caught me making a single character typo. Give yourself a pat on the back. 17th century.
Really? "Those Brits are ignorant and suffering from an inferiority complex." Sounds pretty rude to me, regardless of which has changed more, which as Brandy pointed out is difficult to tell for sure. And true, you didn't say all cultures should be equal, but this is implied, for language at least, when you say that there was no point marginalising people who spoke a minority language. Besides, I'm sure you probably agree that all cultures should be equal, as most reasonable people do, regardless of whether or not you have actually typed that in a comment.
Really. If they knew what they were talking about they wouldn't say it and wouldn't be ignorant. If they weren't insecure then they wouldn't so eagerly grasp at this fallacious idea that Americans don't speak proper English, as a way of making themselves feel better. There's no other explanation. I didn't say British culture was inferior. But those in the UK or Europe who come here or elsewhere and routinely spit out hateful remarks directed at Americans (with no basis in fact) are obviously suffering from some such complex. It's textbook. You are reading in to my comment an implication that said complex is warranted, presumably because Americans are culturally superior, which is not something I believe.
Modern Icelandic is closer to what English was over 1000 years ago than modern English (either British or American) is. We still call the language that has developed since then in England "English". This is the strongest argument I see for American English not being called "English", but it is still pretty weak because US and UK English are orders of magnitude closer than either is to Icelandic. They aren't different languages, though I think it is fair to call them different dialects of the same language. And no doubt inferiority complexes play a role too.
Since leaving this comment the quiz author has filled in English as a "de facto" official language of the United States, which I don't think was really necessary.
Irish Gaelic is spoken in Ireland and Scottish Gaelic in Scotland. Originally I had defined it as Irish Gaelic, but the Quizmaster changed it to just Irish when this became a frontpage quiz.
I think that change doesn't matter much because if you try to type "Irish Gaelic", it will become accepted as soon as you've finished typing "Irish".
I don't think just "Gaelic" is accepted. I believe it is often referred to as just Gaelic, but then it becomes indistinguishable from Scottish Gaelic. So idk if it ought to be accepted or not. :/
Gaelic is accepted if you type it, but almost no one is Ireland uses that world to refer to the language. We refer to our own language as either Irish or Gaeilge (it depends on where you are), and we call Scots Gaelic, that, Scots Gaelic. And to clarify, Scots is it's own language, based more in old English and German.
A language doesn't stop existing just because some government says so. Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian and Montenegrin are considered to be dialects of the same language by some, while others claim that they are different languages. Since there is no scientific definition of what the difference is between a language and a dialect, both claims are equally valid. The quiz has catered for that by letting you type either each language variety separately, or just typing a term that encompasses all of them.
There are languages that are different because they are different. Then, there are languages that are different for political reasons. Serbocroatian is one of those. Before Yugoslavia broke up, these languages were considered to be one language. It was only after Yugoslavia broke up that they were considered separate languages. That is a fallacy to assume that they are separate languages because of politics.
However, Serbian is typically written in Cyrillic where Croatian is written in Latin, yet Hindi and Urdu are considered separate languages: spoken, they are the same language (with dialectal differences), but Urdu is written in Arabic and Hindi is written in Devanagari. Using that logic, it's not a fallacy to assume that Serbian and Croatian are separate languages.
agree with dwo. Student of linguistics here. These languages were invented only to try and create an artificial difference between people who were at war with one another. Realistically, they are the same language. It would be like if the United States had a 2nd civil war, and those in the south declared that they spoke Confederalese and then decreed that all Southern dictionaries excise words like "pop" in favor of "soda," etc... a ridiculous and cynical exercise in the politics of war, not a natural evolution that would produce a truly distinct language.
In the US South, neither "pop" nor "soda" are used...it's all Coke. Or more specifically, Co-cola. Soda is the East & West Coasts, w/an outpost in Milwaukee. Pop is the Midwest, although the dividing line between soda & pop runs north & south from Rochester, NY, through State College, PA, & south, roughly along the Appalachians.
kalbahamut, I see your politico-linguistic point, but as a student of Croatian, I can assure you that the differences between Serbian and Croatian are much bigger than the difference between Northern and Southern English in the US. Aside from the whole issue of using different writing systems, there is a growing difference in vocabulary. I'm guessing time will increase that; mostly because the Croats want it to.
sam.. that's kind of my point though (because the Croats want it to). The differences are artificial and engineered. It's a false evolution of two dialects of the same language. My analogy to Northern/Southern American English was a hypothetical situation in which something similar *could* happen... not something that *has* happened.
Sorry, Bobcat, but soda is definitely used in this part of the Upper South and in the Mid-South where we lived for a while. My college roommates from Michigan and Chicago thought I wanted an ice cream soda when I suggested we get a soda. They were calling it Coke back in the 1970s, but I have cousins in Michigan who still call it pop. I am noticing that the younger generations seem to prefer Coke as the generic word now, regardless of region. My late father-in-law, who grew up in the Ozarks, called it Co-cola.
I forgot to add that when I was a girl in southern Missouri in the 1950s and '60s, everyone called it "sodie" as in, "Let's go to the store and get us a sodie." But when talking about a specific brand, cola was usually attached - Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola, RC Cola, Lotta Cola, etc.
kalbahamut, it's a bit more complicated than that. While today's differences are in big part due to conscious political efforts, Serbian and Croatian are not a result of the recent wars. They are two distinct language standards that existed long before Yugoslavia (ok not that long, modern standardization dates to 19th century, but anyway...) Serbo-Croatian is still one language of course.
Australia speaks English and so does the US (with some others like French, Spanish, etc.), Mexico, and apparently they count Canada but not his poor brother? How mean..
It's funny how many of these you can get right just by adding an "ish" or "n" or "i" somewhere. Or even easier: Typing in the name of the country itself. Interesting quiz though, like it.
Hello quizmaster, I'd just like to say that Romansh is only a NATIONAL language of Switzerland, but not an OFFICIAL one! (it is co-official only at regional level in Graubunden Canton, like german in South Tyrol or Catalan in Catalonia). Even many people in Switzerland think it is an official language at national level, but it isn't. Source: I live in Switzerland
According to the Federal Constitution of Switzerland, Romansh is a national language and also an official language for communicating with people who speak Romansh.
I repeat that Romansh it is NOT an official language of Switzerland at national level. The fact that they allow Romansh people communicating to federal units in Romansh does not make it an official language. Only German, French and Italian are fully official and equivalent at national level, and every law must be translated into the three. I repeat that Romansh has the same relevance as REGIONAL LANGUAGES do in other countries. Here a link from the Swiss parliament that unfortunately is not available in English: http://www.admin.ch/opc/fr/classified-compilation/20062545/index.html
And I repeat that also many Swiss people make confusion on this topic and I get often contradicted.
Info about East Timor is not accurate. The official languages of the country do include Tetum, but not English, although it is widely spoken, due to the proximity to Australia. Portuguese is an official language, even if spoken by a minority of the population. Actually, considering East Timor's National Educational Programme, Portuguese is expected to be spoken by almost 70% of the population within a generation.
Portugal has two official languages. Portuguese, obviously enough, but also Mirandese, spoken by 35000 people. The official languages of Spain include Spanish, incorrectly named for it should be Castellan (Castellano); Catalan; Basque; Galician and also Tenerifan, spoken in Tenerife.
As the years progress, that is less and less true. Australia is a country based on immigration, so the population of immigrants continues to rise, but there are many of these who chose to live among the enclaves of their own ex-pats, and many (particularly when they bring their elderly parents, etc) do not end up learning English. In fact, there are many areas (esp in Sydney and Melbourne) where you'll often see shops signs, etc, in only Mandarin or Vietnamese... But, no - no language has ever been written in to the Constitution. At the time, it was just assumed, since we based it on Westminster law. It's not expressly forbidden, like the creation of an official religion, but there just doesn't seem to be a need.
Now I have something to memorize after the capitals. I hope you are working on something for once I get these to slide off my tongue....has to take us around the world and be very difficult, like countries and then capitals were the first time we tried. Thank you so much! They say use it or lose it, and you've taken 50 years off the age of my brain as I'm memorizing something new everyday. I read deeper things too but the memorization really makes the blood flow to the dead parts up there! :)
please can you add Pedi or SiPedi for Northern Sotho, as that is it's other (indigenous) name. I was having a hard time with it. Also, as a favour, Ukrainean, and Belarussian. I would appreciate that.
From what I've read, SiPedi/Sepedi/Pedi is a dialect, and "Northern Sotho" or "Sesotho sa Leboa" are the recommended names for the language. I'm no expert on this though.
I'll add the suggested variants for Ukrainian and Belarusian to the pipeline of changes.
Very, very interesting quiz. One of the best I think.
However, I am sorry to say that nowhere in Icelandic law is Icelandic the official language of Iceland. It is by far de facto, but not officially. Strangely, Icelandic sign language is the official language of hearing impaired Icelanders.
It's funny how former British colonies in Africa with barely any English speakers use English as their official language while the US with the largest English speaking population in the world doesn't.
Huh, this is new. I think Zimbabwe will have to get the same treatment as Bolivia in this quiz. Some of the Zimbabwean languages are poorly defined too. Anyhow, this quiz seriously needs an update...
Hmm. I see it in Wikipedia, but there is no reference to official sources. It's also not in the CIA World Factbook entry, updated this month. But there are many news reports from May 2015 heralding its addition, so I'd suggest to the QM / Zefyrinus that it looks legit.
Missed Korean which would have gotten me the full 5pts. Annoying to forget that since it's just the country name!
Also South Africa is hogging all the languages. I guess it makes sense in post-apartheid SA to elevate all the major African languages into an official equality, but it looks odd next to e.g. India which has similar language diversity.
I have a big issue with US not having an official language. English is the only language in which all legislation is published and the language used at courts, among other things. There's such thing as customary law.
Otherwise I would expect to see "Nauru ... none" in the capitals quiz, there's a much stronger case for this one.
Well, for the US it's undisputable that English is the de facto "official" language, but when it comes to other countries it might be debatable what languages I should list for them if I opened up for this. So I need to base this on some kind of objective data. And for that reason I have chosen to only include whatever each country has defined as their official language.
Various spellings of Belarusian should be accepted, I have seen Belarussian and Belorussian used before and only guessed those two. Motuan should be accepted for Hiri Motu as it is the English name for the language, I guessed Motuan first.
Also, a note about Slovak/Slovene and the addition of -ian: I believe Slovakian is a correct equivalent but Slovenian isn't, but I'm not 100% sure.
Belarusian with two S was supposed to be accepted, but it wasn't due to a mistake in the type-ins. I've fixed this now. But are you sure about Hiri Motu? There is a language called just Motu, on which Hiri Motu, the pidgin/creole language, is based on. The only thing I can find about "Motuan" is that it's the name of the people who speak Motu.
Surprised so many people missed Quechua/Aymara, Malagasy, Amharic, Tigrinya, and Guaraní... I thought those were all common knowledge, especially Amharic, Quechua, and Aymara
I agree, Hatian Creole should work. I got lucky...I tried Creole and, when that didn't work, I put the cursor in front of Creole and began typing 'Hatian' but it accepted it at Haiti.
That's odd, I can't find any mentioning of official or national languages of Chile on WP. But when I Google, all the sources say Spanish is the official language.
Hmm, I just looked this up now, and one document says that Amharic is the working language of the federal government. Though some other sources say that it's the official language of the government. :?
Not that it matters, but correct me if I'm wrong, in New Zealand, isn't English not considered an official language. When I went there a few months ago, I was told that there are only 2 official languages (Māori and NZ Sign Language), and that English, despite being the most widely spoken language, isn't formally designated as an official language. So if you're including English for New Zealand, you might as well include English for Australia, UK, US, Spanish for Mexico, etc. for the sake of consistency or otherwise remove English as an official language of NZ. Plus, should English be removed as an official language, it would probably confuse many people, and waste their time trying to figure out how to type 'English', which is always entertaining. +1 for accepting Seychellois
India should be removed because India too nor has any official languages. Hindi is the most spoken language and English is used for official works, but they are not our national language. There are 22 recognized languages of India, if possible put all the 22 languages.
According to Wikipedia, Hindi is the "official language of the government" and English a "subsidiary official language". I'm not really sure what exactly those terms mean though...
Sign languages are fully different languages from spoken languages. You don't have to be able to read a spoken language in order to understand and communicate with a sign language. I don't doubt that almost all sign language users can read another dominant language of their country, though.
I was wondering the same thing as someone2018 too, like maybe the government keeps a video archive of laws signed in NZSL.
Te Reo Maori was recognised as an official language in 1987, and NZ Sign Language achieved the same status in 2006. But there is currently no legislation that recognises English as an official language. Parliament is currently considering a draft bill to make it so, as it seems a bit daft.
I tried to look up your statement. It's really complicated: http://houseikyoku.sangiin.go.jp/column/column068.htm
The interesting part is this: 日本の国語は日本語であるとか、公用語は日本語であるなどと定める条文はないんだ。ただ、法律上「国語」という用例はあるし、そのような条文は日本語のことを国語といっているのだと理解できるよ。
To quickly Google translate that: There is no provision that states that Japanese national language is Japanese and official language is Japanese. However, there is an example in law called "national language", and it can be understood that such a clause means that Japanese is a national language.
Indeed, it's JetPunk policy to use the common English name as far as I know, so Swaziland should be the name used on this quiz. By the way, Israel is in the process of removing the official status of Arabic, though I'm not sure whether that law change has been completed yet. So maybe that can wait.
Why does the UK not have English as our official language? we invented it!!!! Also, no White English speaking country has it as their official language either. Whats the conspiracy behind this?
Hmm, I'm not sure anymore if this quiz used to include national languages or not. Now at least only official languages are included, so I'll schedule the answer for Argentina to be changed.
"The Academy of Persian Language and Literature, however, has declared that the name Persian is more appropriate, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity."
However, Farsi should be an acceptable type-in for the language of Iran, which it apparently wasn't. This will be changed in the next reset of the quiz.
Norway has Samí as an official Language too. I know it is considered a minority Language in the other countries within Sápmi, but in Norway it has the same status as Norwegian.
A lot of things has been changed now in 2019. Arabic is no longer an official language of Israel anymore but a "recognized language" and South Korea has now its sign language as one of its official languages like New Zealand does. You guys need to look up to things.
Thank you for including de facto official languages now! There's not much practical (or even legal) difference between de jure and de facto official languages.
THIS QUIZ NEEDS MORE TIME!!! I refuse to believe that you think we can actually get all of the spellings of these words right on the first try. And can you accept CREOLE as a type-in for all different types of Creole, rather than having us type in all the different types individually (again, taking up precious time that WE DON'T HAVE!!!)
No need to shout!! And I just got 100 on tablet, if I was on a computer I could get them all in time, I'm atleast 1/3 slower on tablet (mainly more typos, on a bad typing day it is more like 1/2 as fast). In theory that is, I dont know them all, I think there are about 5 more I could get.
Why can't just creole work? Took me a while to figure I had to add prefixes, can we just allow it to fill in the most popular version of creole and then have to name the rest?
Hmm, I'm not sure. Amhara is the name of the ethnic group who speak Amharic. I only checked the Wikipedia article, but that one doesn't list Amhara as an alternative name for the language.
Sweden does not have an official language. It is de facto the majority language and it's official when Sweden represents outwards. There are five official minority languages though (finnish, yiddish, meänkieli, romani and sami).
Swedish was officially made the "main language" in 2009. ( https://web.archive.org/web/20141110205547/http://www.riksdagen.se/sv/Dokument-Lagar/Lagar/Svenskforfattningssamling/Spraklag-2009600_sfs-2009-600/ ) It's unclear if this should be interpreted to mean the same thing as a national or official language.
Truly puzzled that The Netherlands is now depicted as a de facto language rather than a de jure language, and wondering where the decision to note it as a de facto language came from.
I looked at the Dutch government's own website where it implicitly states that Dutch is indeed the official language, and that Fries (Frisian) is the second official language in that particular province. Papiamento and English are also considered as official languages in the Caribbean Netherlands.
So you have two languages for India and half a dozen or more for South Africa. Really? Do you have any idea how many languages are spoken in India’s relatively small neighbour Pakistan let alone India? Here allow me to list them all(for Pakistan):
English, Urdu, pashto, Punjabi,Sindhi, saraiki, Baltit, Farsi, Hindko, Baluchi, Brahui etc. That’s not even exhaustive.
Now divide the land area of India by Pakistan, and multiply the languages above, and that’s APPROXIMATELY how many MAIN languages are spoken in India.
I don’t know that much about China, but seeing as how you missed Cantonese I’m guessing you made similar omission there as well. Please correct.
Some of those are working languages in various institutions, but they're not official languages of the Vatican City. Italian is the official language of the Vatican City, and Latin is the official language of the Holy See. What the difference between the Vatican City and the Holy See is, is a difficult question...
But... I honestly don't know what you are implying so my guess work in responding to it could be totally off. A little help?
Cao: I wasn't being rude and I didn't say what you said I said.
tshalla: you are usually not worth responding to, and your comment here is predictably obnoxious, but yes you caught me making a single character typo. Give yourself a pat on the back. 17th century.
I think that change doesn't matter much because if you try to type "Irish Gaelic", it will become accepted as soon as you've finished typing "Irish".
I don't think just "Gaelic" is accepted. I believe it is often referred to as just Gaelic, but then it becomes indistinguishable from Scottish Gaelic. So idk if it ought to be accepted or not. :/
However, Serbian is typically written in Cyrillic where Croatian is written in Latin, yet Hindi and Urdu are considered separate languages: spoken, they are the same language (with dialectal differences), but Urdu is written in Arabic and Hindi is written in Devanagari. Using that logic, it's not a fallacy to assume that Serbian and Croatian are separate languages.
And I repeat that also many Swiss people make confusion on this topic and I get often contradicted.
La Constitución española de 1978.
Título preliminar
Artículo 3
El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado. Todos los españoles tienen el deber de conocerla y el derecho a usarla.
Las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas de acuerdo con sus Estatutos.
La riqueza de las distintas modalidades lingüísticas de España es un patrimonio cultural que será objeto de especial respeto y protección.
http://www.congreso.es/consti/constitucion/indice/titulos/articulos.jsp?ini=3&tipo=2
I'll add the suggested variants for Ukrainian and Belarusian to the pipeline of changes.
However, I am sorry to say that nowhere in Icelandic law is Icelandic the official language of Iceland. It is by far de facto, but not officially. Strangely, Icelandic sign language is the official language of hearing impaired Icelanders.
"Icelandic is the national language of the Icelandic people and the official language in Iceland."
Also South Africa is hogging all the languages. I guess it makes sense in post-apartheid SA to elevate all the major African languages into an official equality, but it looks odd next to e.g. India which has similar language diversity.
Otherwise I would expect to see "Nauru ... none" in the capitals quiz, there's a much stronger case for this one.
Sign Language ?
Also, a note about Slovak/Slovene and the addition of -ian: I believe Slovakian is a correct equivalent but Slovenian isn't, but I'm not 100% sure.
buck1017: OK, I'll add just Haitian to be accepted after the next update.
I am literally learning this may not be the case here...wth nz!
Also a little question, how did you make a question have more than one answer? I've always had that dbout. One expample of this is South Africa.
I was wondering the same thing as someone2018 too, like maybe the government keeps a video archive of laws signed in NZSL.
I have trouble finding any official website stating that English would be an official language. Does anyone know any good links?
The interesting part is this: 日本の国語は日本語であるとか、公用語は日本語であるなどと定める条文はないんだ。ただ、法律上「国語」という用例はあるし、そのような条文は日本語のことを国語といっているのだと理解できるよ。
To quickly Google translate that: There is no provision that states that Japanese national language is Japanese and official language is Japanese. However, there is an example in law called "national language", and it can be understood that such a clause means that Japanese is a national language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_language#Name_of_the_language
However, Farsi should be an acceptable type-in for the language of Iran, which it apparently wasn't. This will be changed in the next reset of the quiz.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-the-official-language-of-the-united-states.html
I looked at the Dutch government's own website where it implicitly states that Dutch is indeed the official language, and that Fries (Frisian) is the second official language in that particular province. Papiamento and English are also considered as official languages in the Caribbean Netherlands.
English, Urdu, pashto, Punjabi,Sindhi, saraiki, Baltit, Farsi, Hindko, Baluchi, Brahui etc. That’s not even exhaustive.
Now divide the land area of India by Pakistan, and multiply the languages above, and that’s APPROXIMATELY how many MAIN languages are spoken in India.
I don’t know that much about China, but seeing as how you missed Cantonese I’m guessing you made similar omission there as well. Please correct.