Language & Words Trivia
A trivia pack on language itself — the world's language families, the etymology of common words, the famous loanwords from one language into another, and the curiosities of grammar and writing systems that show up on every word-nerd quiz night.
Start a Language quiz →Languages and writing
Language families: Indo-European (and its branches), Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo, Austronesian, Dravidian. The most-spoken languages by native and total speakers. Writing systems: Latin alphabet, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari, Chinese characters (and the simplified-vs-traditional split), Hangul, Japanese (kanji / hiragana / katakana).
Famous endangered and revived languages (Welsh, Irish, Hebrew's revival, Hawaiian, Cornish). The unique features of certain languages (tonal languages, click consonants, gender systems, evidentiality).
Etymology and loanwords
Famous etymologies: words from Greek (-ology, -graphy, -phobia), Latin (legal terms, anatomy), Arabic (algebra, algorithm, coffee, sugar, lemon), Sanskrit (yoga, karma, avatar), Yiddish (chutzpah, schmooze, glitch). English loanwords from French (cuisine, ballet, fiancé), German (kindergarten, schadenfreude, zeitgeist), Italian (opera, piano, ciao).
Famous fixed phrases ("hoist by his own petard", "the proof of the pudding"), eponyms (words from people's names — sandwich, boycott, silhouette, bowdlerise, quixotic), and the famous neologisms (selfie, googling, ghosting).
Frequently asked questions
How hard is it?
Pitched at general-knowledge / word-nerd level, not linguistics-degree.
Is it English-only?
No — questions cover word origins across many source languages and the world's language families.
Are spelling rules in?
Lightly — the famous tricky spellings appear but the pack isn't a spelling bee.
How many players?
Up to six per room.