Two out of five failed to recognise any foreign languages on this quiz – how would you do?

The world has around 6,500 different spoken languages, but how many can you understand? Online language learning platform, Preply has created a quiz to test people’s knowledge of how many different spoken languages they can recognise.

Preply’s research* found that 57% of respondents recognised at least one language, meaning that nearly half (43%) didn’t understand any of the languages put in front of them.

But which languages were the easiest, and hardest, to understand? Our research reveals that the top ten most recognisable languages, based on the percentage of respondents who correctly identified them, are as followed:

French (88%)
Japanese (82%)
Serbian (76%)
Hebrew (74%)
Chinese (71%)
Italian (70%)
German (69%)
Spanish (67%)
Russian (61%)
Urdu (57%)

Nearly nine in ten (88%) respondents could correctly identify French, with eight in ten (82%) being able to recognise the Japanese language and 76% understanding Serbian, making these the three most recognisable languages. Hebrew, Chinese, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, and Urdu make up the top ten.

18-25-year olds had the highest number of correct responses, with an average pass rate of 60%.

At the other end of the scale, the five least recognisable languages, based on the percentage of respondents who correctly identified them, are:

Ukrainian (35%)
Dutch (37%)
Greek (37%)
Portuguese (41%)
Turkish (41%)

Although, Ukrainian was the least recognisable language with only a third (35%) correctly identifying it, it seems the respondents had most trouble identifying Turkish.

That’s because nearly half (49%) of respondents thought the Dutch audio file was Turkish, others (45%) believed Portuguese was Turkish, whilst 49% believed Greek was Turkish too. When played with the Turkish audio file, only two in five (41%) correctly identified it, with the majority (48%) believing it was Russian.

Commenting on the findings, Kirill Bigai, CEO and co-founder at Preply, says: “Learning a language is a great skill that you can take with you throughout your life. However, our research found that 43% of respondents could not correctly identify any of the languages in our quiz!

“It may not come as a surprise that French was the most recognisable language, but it is surprising to see that languages such as Urdu, Russian and Serbian are widely recognised, as these aren’t commonly taught in English-speaking schools. It’s never too late to learn a second language, and at Preply, we encourage anyone and everyone to do it!”

To take the quiz for yourself to see how you would compare, please visit: https://preply.com/en/d/most-recognizable-languages/