For French, I am 95% sure the correct answer is Paris. My assumption is that, in Kinshasa, many more people speak Lingala (or other indigenous languages) at home than speak French.
But as the DRC is a very poor country there is no data.
So I will allow Kinshasa even though its almost certainly not correct.
Excellent quiz but a little too generous on time. I got 100% first time with 61 seconds to spare, so I think reducing the time limit by 30 seconds would be fair.
'Tolerated' you are not very tolerant when it comes to time for quizzes that you are good at. Most quizzes (except the timed typing quizzes) are for general knowledge not typing skills. If you are one of those unfortunate people that think that typing skills are more important than knowledge, I feel sorry for you. If you are just a very intelligent quizzer then try some of my quizzes, you might not find those as easy. (click on Malbaby and go from there)
Is the urban area of Tel Aviv considered larger than Jerusalem on citypopulation.de? Or is Arabic listed as more common than Hebrew? I'd be more likely to believe the former than the latter, though I was pretty sure Jerusalem was bigger.
Tel Aviv metro is a lot larger than Jerusalem according to citypopulation.de. Citypopulation data is not correct for Jerusalem though, as the population of the metro area is equaled to the population of the city proper. Pretty sure that even with proper data Tel Aviv metro would be substantially larger than Jerusalem metro.
The point is that dhaka's pop in 2013 was more than kolkata's in 2015. Dhaka's pop has substantially increased. So in a span of 2 years its pop has had increased more than 14.38 million proving that he is right..
20 out of 24. I kept typing in Hong Kong; I did not think that guagzhou had such a big population. But the way what is the difference between Wu and Mandarin
Difference between Wu and Mandarin is that they're different languages. 'Hello' in Mandarin is 'nihao', in Wu it is 'nong ho'. The number 10 in Mandarin is 'shi', in Wu it is 'sat'.
Although China we refer to regional differences as dialects, or 'fangyan'. Supposedly there are seven major dialects, including Wu and Cantonese. Putonghua or Mandarin is the 'official' Chinese language and it is based on the Beijing dialect. Some linguists consider the dialects as separate languages, some don't. There might as well be thousands of languages in China, as in many cases, even different regions in the same city have dialects that are incomprehensible to each other.
In linguistics, the various languages in China are different languages, not dialects. In Chinese, people and the government tend to call them dialects. The rule is that if they are not mutually intelligible, they are different languages. Mandarin and Cantonese are not mutually intelligible; neither are Mandarin and Wu.
I don’t think Dialects and Languages are mutually exclusive. I think that the distinction is negligible because the Chinese languages are clearly very similar, and yet also very clearly not mutually intelligible. Much like everything, it is a spectrum and where you draw the line is arbitrary.
Guangzhou does not have that large of a population, you can't just include other cities like Shenzhen, Dongguan and Huizhou into Guangzhou and even if you did, Shenzhen is a city where you speak mandarin due to the fact that the majority of the population have migrated from other provinces
Update 2023: It's impossible to find good data. I think that Lingala is probably the most commonly-spoken native language in Kinshasa but I can't confirm. Kinshasa will be accepted now.
serbo-croatian does NOT exist. It existed in Yugoslavia times, in a political way. Same as Czechoslovakian. But they were separated languages. But political or not. It does not ecist.
A language does not cease to exist when countries split or are put together. (Instantly I mean, ofcourse it can change after a couple centuries). Look at belgium for instance. they speak french and dutch
I think this is false if you consider the urban area. But more importantly this isn't based on the cities with the largest number of speakers of each language, it's about naming the biggest cities where each language is spoken more than any other language in those cities.
I have also never heard of the language "Yoruba"...hehehe...
And for Hebrew I typed in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Amman, Baghdad,...I am so untalented.
For Vietnamese I tried Phnom Penh, and for all those languages like Marathi, Tamil or Gujarati I just tried all the Hindi cities I know...Still got all of them...but #facepalm
Have you been to Kinshasa .... There is no way a majority of people living there speak French, and certainly not French at home as their usual language of communication. Yes, because of colonialism, it is an official language there, but that does not mean many or most people use it much.
I still find the Wu thing quite surprising. I lived for half a year in Shanghai and encountered a single Wu speaker. I don't know what people do at their homes, but on the street Wu is almost non-existent (from my laowai perspective, of course).
Not gonna lie, the Italian and the Cantonese one confused me. I was surprised that Milan had more Italian speakers than Rome and Venice. As for the Cantonese one, I thought it was commonly spoken in South-East Asia. By the way I'm currently living in India so the Indian cities were quite easy for me lol.
I do not think that Marathi is not the most commonly spoken language of Mumbai.
According to this wikipedia article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai,
Marathi is spoken by 32.2% of the population, Hindi by 25.9% of population and Urdu by 11.7%. But Hindi and Urdu in spoken form (as spoken language is the criterion for this quiz) are the same language often described by the name 'Hindustani' which takes it's total to 37.6%, more than Marathi.
1. Being born and brought up in Mumbai is neither a source nor does it give you a mathematical answer on which language is spoken more at home when the numbers are so close. Also I have lived in Mumbai for 10 years but it does not change the answer at all
2. Urdu being a "Pakistani language" is neither correct not does it bring any value to this discussion
Hindi and Urdu are not the same language. They have substantial vocabulary and grammatical differences. Just because they sound similar doesn't mean they are to be considered one. Also, the official language of Mumbai is Marathi. So, either way Marathi comes first..
They have differences in the formal register and not in the language commonly spoken at home. The difference is in the script but so is the case between Serbo Croatian "langauges".
Check your sources again, even though it is better for integrity to be more conservative with your numbers citypopulation.de is quite inaccurate messing up on countries by giving them less or more than they have. In my opinion, put more research into what source you use or just average between two sources (although it would be more work). I love your quizzes and I just want to give one piece of insight so you are aware. Don't take this harshly but not lightly either! : )
"Metro area" is a vague term, for example, London proper has more people than NYC proper yet it is commonly accepted the metro area has more people. However, if you drew a ring the size of the NYC metro area around London, the population would once again be higher.
But as the DRC is a very poor country there is no data.
So I will allow Kinshasa even though its almost certainly not correct.
I have also never heard of the language "Yoruba"...hehehe...
And for Hebrew I typed in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Amman, Baghdad,...I am so untalented.
For Vietnamese I tried Phnom Penh, and for all those languages like Marathi, Tamil or Gujarati I just tried all the Hindi cities I know...Still got all of them...but #facepalm
According to this wikipedia article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai,
Marathi is spoken by 32.2% of the population, Hindi by 25.9% of population and Urdu by 11.7%. But Hindi and Urdu in spoken form (as spoken language is the criterion for this quiz) are the same language often described by the name 'Hindustani' which takes it's total to 37.6%, more than Marathi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindustani_language
Source: born and bought up in Mumbai.
2. Urdu being a "Pakistani language" is neither correct not does it bring any value to this discussion
Being official also does not change anything