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Exploring the English Language: A Quiz on Its History and Varieties

This quiz tests your knowledge of the English language, its historical development, status in various countries, and its relationship with other languages and dialects.

#English language #linguistics #education #language history #Commonwealth

1 It is also one of the 11 official languages that are given equal status in South Africa (________).

2 Which of the following titles did English language have?

3 English is a West Germanic language that developed in ________ and south-eastern Scotland during the Anglo-Saxon era.

4 There is also a tunnelspeak for use in the ________.

5 [11][12] It is used extensively as a second language and as an official language in the ________ and many Commonwealth countries, as well as many international organisations.

6 These should not be confused with true sign languages such as British Sign Language and ________ used in Anglophone countries, which are independent and not based on English.

7 After the time of the Norman conquest, Old English developed into Middle English, borrowing heavily from the Norman, and later on the ________ and Anglo-French, vocabulary and spelling conventions.

8 Hence we exclude all words that had become obsolete by 1150 [the end of the ________ era]...

9 Ogden said that it would take seven years to learn English, seven months for ________, and seven weeks for Basic English.

10 [24] Although the most significant changes in dialect occurred after the Norman invasion of 1066, the language retained its name and the pre-Norman invasion dialect is now known as ________.

đź’ˇ Interesting Facts

  • in 1656, German violinist Thomas Baltzar helped premiere The Siege of Rhodes, thought to have been the first all-sung English opera.
  • as well as being the only contemporary anthology of 17th century Scottish Gaelic verse, the Fernaig manuscript is written in a form of English orthography unique to the author.
  • as a result of Janina San Miguel's response to a question in the 2008 Binibining Pilipinas World pageant, the Philippine government proposed English courses for beauty pageant contestants.
  • in a Spanish language scene of the Dexter episode "Return to Sender", actor David Zayas learned all of his dialogue in English and translated each line mentally during each take.
  • in his recitals baritone David Bispham (pictured) often sang English versions of songs by Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, and others.
  • the German rock group Tokio Hotel has released six singles and an album in English.
  • the English names for the towns of Brecon (pictured) and Cardigan derive from the names of Welsh mediaeval kingdoms, but the Welsh names for those same places refer to local rivers.
  • although Russian playwright Viktoriya Tokareva's writing style is often compared to that of Anton Chekhov, none of her work has been published in English.
  • a single verb in the Nez PercĂ© language, which is currently spoken by fewer than 100 people, can contain as much information as a complete sentence in English.
  • The Face on the Cutting-Room Floor is a whodunit written in English by German-born sexologist Ernest Borneman when he was not yet 20 years of age.
  • The Enchanter is the last work of fiction written by Vladimir Nabokov in Russian but was first published in English after his death.
  • The Californian, California's first newspaper, appeared first in August 1846 on large sheets of cigarette paper, with English on one side and Spanish on the other.
  • The Master of Game is considered to be the first English language book on hunting.
  • Under Your Spell, director Otto Preminger's first English language film, was a remake of the Spanish language release Las fronteras del amor.
  • Thai filmmaker Aditya Assarat writes his scripts in English and then translates them to the Thai language.
  • The Boke of Chyldren by Thomas Phaire, published in 1545, was the first book on paediatrics written in the English language.
  • the Greek musical group C:Real sang only in English before the arrival of lead vocalist Irini Douka in 2002, which led them to focus on Greek language songs.
  • the inscription on the memorial stone of Ingram de Ketenis is the earliest known English inscription north of the River Forth.
  • the parents of Chicana fiction writer and Cornell University English professor Helena Maria Viramontes met while working in the fields, and that the impact of CĂ©sar Chávez and the United Farm Workers later influenced her fiction.
  • the oldest surviving translation of the Gospels into English was made at St Mary and St Cuthbert (pictured), Chester-le-Street, England.
  • the lyrics of one of the most popular French folk songs, Marlbrough s'en va-t-en guerre, which has the same melody as the English song For He's a Jolly Good Fellow, were written on a false rumour.
  • the proceedings of the British Summary Court were in both English and German.
  • the song "Ninanajna" has two very different sets of lyrics - one in English and one in Macedonian.
  • upcoming film Afterwards is shot entirely in English, despite being written and directed by Frenchman Gilles Bourdos, adapted from a French novel and co-produced by a French production company.
  • the words "Never Again" were supposedly inscribed in English and Hebrew on the first warhead from Israel's nuclear program.
  • the first Spanish film shot in English is La residencia, a 1969 horror film about murders in a female-only boarding school.
  • the first English translations of the works of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov were published by Breslov Research Institute more than 170 years after the Rebbe's death.
  • the short film 5 Men and a Limo showcases the world's five most prolific English language film trailer voiceover artists narrating a shared limousine ride.
  • the Roman Catholic Church objected to the English translations in the Tyndale Bible, believing them to be purposeful mistranslations to promote anticlericalism and heretical views.
  • the spinnenkopmolen Arkens, Franeker, is the only windmill in the Netherlands fitted with Vlinderwieken (English: Butterfly sails).
  • the Dictionary of the Middle Ages (1989) is the largest English language encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, covering over 100,000 topics.
  • the children's anime series The Littl' Bits has aired in Japanese, English, Spanish, Polish, German, and Italian.
  • the final decades of Visigothic rule in Spain have been labelled "protofeudal" by Spanish historians, but this label has been largely rejected in English historiography.
  • the director of the 1981 Spanish film Deprisa, Deprisa (English: Hurry, Hurry!) was accused of paying his cast in hard drugs.
  • Tien Ang Tong is the first Methodist church built in China that provided services in the English language.
  • William Leybourn (pictured) wrote the first English language astronomy compendium.
  • lexicographer Henry Cockeram wrote the first known English language dictionary to contain "dictionary" in the title.
  • Leo Tolstoy's play The Living Corpse played in New York City in both Yiddish (1911) and German (1916) before it was ever presented there in English (1918).
  • IBM's Automatic Language Translator machines used by the US Air Force had optical disks that stored thousands of Russian-to-English translations.
  • Quang Nhuong Huynh's autobiography The Land I Lost won seven awards and was translated into four languages other than English.
  • Soviet literature declared Russian the "world language of internationalism", denouncing French as the "language of fancy courtiers" and English as the "jargon of traders".
  • Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet was Franklin's proposal for a spelling reform of the English language.
  • "Dahil Sa Iyo", a song with Tagalog and English lyrics, is so popular that it has been suggested as a replacement for the Filipino anthem.
  • English once had a four-form yes and no system, employed by Shakespeare and others, instead of the two-form system that it has today.
  • Edyta GĂłrniak sang part of "To Nie Ja" in English at the dress rehearsal for the Eurovision Song Contest 1994, which almost caused the song to be disqualified.
  • botanist Henry Lyte's Niewe Herball of 1578 was an English translation of the 1564 Cruydeboeck of Rembert Dodoens printed in Antwerp with the woodcuts of the original edition.
  • Andrew Carnegie (pictured) founded the Simplified Spelling Board in 1906, with the aim of making English the world language by addressing its difficult spelling.
  • 92% of students at West London's Villiers High School do not speak English as their first language.
  • children's book publisher Kane/Miller published the English language edition of Everyone Poops.
  • Chilean Canadian writer Carmen Rodriguez publishes much of her work in both English and Spanish, and that she herself is responsible for their translation.
  • Dutch rocker Wally Tax learned English by age 11 by working as a pimp for American sailors in the Port of Amsterdam.
  • Dutch linguist Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk published a Batak-Dutch dictionary to enable him to translate the Bible into Batak in 1861, and his posthumous trilingual Kawi-Balinese-Dutch dictionary was republished in English in 1971.
  • Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin is a mixed language based on Malay, Japanese, English and Australian Aboriginal languages.
  • Chetham's Library in Manchester, England is the oldest public library in the English-speaking world.
  • Quang Nhuong Huynh was the first Vietnamese to write fiction and non-fiction in English.
  • Peter and Jane are the main characters in a series of 36 children's early readers for the English language published by Ladybird Books that have been in print for over 40 years, and have sold over 80 million copies.
  • Muzzammil Hassan is the CEO of Bridges TV, the first American Muslim television network to broadcast in English.
  • Sabine Ehrenfeld, the Overstock.com spokesmodel, is fluent in German, French, English, and Italian and that she is an experienced pilot and equestrian.
  • science fiction and fantasy in Poland traces its origins to the Polish Enlightenment, and that many of its writers are translated into foreign languages—with the notable exception of English.
  • Lady Una Troubridge introduced the French writer Colette to English readers.
  • Shakespeare and Company, an English-language bookstore in left bank Paris, first published James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922, but the book was subsequently banned in the United States, United Kingdom and the author's home country Ireland.
  • Milt Gross, writer of comics that used Yiddish-inflected English, also wrote a 1930 "silent" graphic novel He Done Her Wrong: The Great American Novel and Not a Word in It — No Music, Too.
  • Merten de Keyser printed the first complete French and English Bibles in Antwerp.
  • Fred Whishaw was the first to translate the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky into the English language.
  • Englog is English mixed with Tagalog words, while Taglish is Tagalog mixed with English words.
  • Gene Lees wrote the English language lyrics to Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Corcovado" on a bus travelling to Belo Horizonte.
  • Hal Fryar received a number of complaints from English teachers because he appeared in a film with the grammatically incorrect title The Outlaws Is Coming.
  • Joseph Breitenbeck was sued by a parish church for implementing the Vatican II reform of changing the language of the Mass from Latin to English.
  • Humphrey Chetham founded Chetham's Library, the oldest public library in the English-speaking world.
  • 16 of the 72 fiction authors with at least 100 million copies of their works in print did not write in English, and 16 of the 72 are women.
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