The Babelfish is a wonderful creature that causes wars, right? It helps with translation in the galaxy. But surely there are no mysteries about language on Earth?

Ha. And again, ha.

Here is an Earth map:

Here are some facts about ten Earth languages. Place the languages in the general geographical area where they are spoken.

1. Xhosa: 8 million speakers. Has clicks and is tonal.
2. Belarusian: 3 million speakers. Can be written in Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, or Hebrew script. Spelling bees must be fun.
3. Silbo Gomero: 22,000 speakers. You whistle it!
4. Rotokas: 4,000 speakers. Only has 12 letters, and they never say the letter 'n' unless they're making fun of foreigners. Oh, and there are three dialects.
5. Michif: Fewer than 1,000 speakers. Uses French nouns and Cree verbs, which is clearly impossible. They probably have breakfast at Milliways.
6. Archi: Fewer than 970 speakers. Has 82 consonants, and over 1.5 million forms for a single verb. Don't they have anything better to do?
7. Koro: 800 speakers. It isn't related to any of its neighbouring languages, though it is in the Tibeto-Burman family.
8. Pirahã: 380 speakers. Women use one less consonant than men. There is no past tense, because if you don't see something, it doesn't exist.
9. Ayapaneco: 2 speakers. Worse, for years, they were mad and wouldn't talk to each other.
10. Sentinelese: Number of speakers unknown. Nobody has ever heard this language, because if you get close enough to hear them, they shoot arrows at you. Only one anthropologist has ever made contact and lived to tell the tale. All that is known is that they do talk to each other.

A few of those may have been tricky. Click on the map to find the answers.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

25.06.18 Front Page

Back Issue Page