The Language

1. For which one of the following countries Spanish is not an official language ? [I.A.S. (Pre) 2005]

(a) Chile
(b) Colombia
(c) Republic of Congo
(d) Cuba

Correct Answer: (c) Republic of Congo
Note:

Spanish is an official language of Chile, Colombia & Cuba while it is not spoken in the Republic of Congo.

2. In which one of the following countries is Tamil a major language? [I.A.S. (Pre) 2005]

(a) Myanmar
(b) Indonesia
(c) Mauritius
(d) Singapore

Correct Answer: (d) Singapore
Note:

The description of language associated with countries mentioned in question are as follows:

Country	Language
Myanmar	Burmese
Indonesia	Indonesian (official language), English, Dutch, Javanese, etc.
Mauritius	English, French (official languages), Hindi, Urdu, Hakka, Bhojpuri, and Creole
Singapore	Malay (National language), English, Mandarin Chinese, and Tamil (all official languages)

Thus, Tamil is an official language of Singapore. So, the correct answer would be (d).

3. Given below is a map of America The shaded (marked 1 and 2), dotted (marked 3) and the plain areas (marked 4) indicate respectively, the regions where the languages spoken are: [I.A.S. (Pre) 1994]

(a) Spanish, French, Portuguese and others
(b) French, Spanish, Portuguese and others
(c) French, Portuguese, Spanish and English
(d) Portuguese, French, Spanish and others

Correct Answer: (c) French, Portuguese, Spanish and English
Note:

In the above map, mark I reflects French (French Guinea) language; mark 2 Portuguese (Brazil); mark 3 Spanish (Argentina) and mark 4 reflects English. Thus, the correct answer would be option (c).

4. Given below are two statements, one is labelled as on Assertion (A) and other as Reason (R). [U.P. R.O./A.R.O. (Mains) 2016]

Assertion (A): Pakistan has greater racial and ethnic diversity than Bangladesh

Reason (R): Punjabi is the official language of Pakistan where most people use Urdu language in speaking.

Choose the correct answer from the code given below:

Code:

(a) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A)
(b) Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A)
(c) (A) is true but (R) is false
(d) (A) is false but (R) is true

Correct Answer: (c) (A) is true but (R) is false
Note:

English and Urdu, both, are the official languages of Pakistan. Punjabi is the most widely spoken language, but not an official language. Bangladesh is noted for the ethnic homogeneity of its population.

5. Which of the following is not correctly matched? [U.P.R.O./A.R.O.(Pre) 2021]

	Language	Country
(a)	Danish	Denmark
(b)	Dutch	Netherlands
(c)	Mandarin	China
(d)	Bahasa	Thailand

(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)

Correct Answer: (d)
Note:

The correct match is as follows:

Language	Country
Danish	Denmark
Dutch	Netherlands
Mandarin	China
Bahasa	Indonesia

6. What is Esperanto? [38th B.P.S.C. (Pre) 1992]

(a) Highest mountain of Latin America
(b) Seaport city of Spain
(c) The name of a game
(d) An artificial language to serve as world language

Correct Answer: (d) An artificial language to serve as world language
Note:

Esperanto is an International auxiliary language devised by Dr. Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof.

7. The language spoken by the largest number of people in the world is : [I.A.S. (Pre) 1999]

(a) Hindi
(b) English
(c) Mandarin mentales
(d) Spanish

Correct Answer: (c) Mandarin mentales
Note:

Mandarin was the language spoken by the largest number of people when this question was asked. Census related to language has two important components. (A) L-1-People using a language as primary language or mother tongue.

(B) L2 People using a language as a second language besides primary language or mother tongue. The total number of L-1 and L-2 is considered as the total number of users of a language. Presently English is spoken by the largest number of people in the world.

8. The most widely spoken language is : [Jharkhand P.C.S. (Pre) 2011]

(a) Chinese
(b) English
(c) Bengali
(d) Spanish

Correct Answer: (a) Chinese
Note: