Country Languages Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The language is Rajasthani.

Sahitya Akademi recognises 24 languages for its awards and programmes: the 22 languages of the Eighth Schedule plus English and Rajasthani. Rajasthani is not in the Eighth Schedule.

Nepali, Konkani and Sindhi are all in the Eighth Schedule, so they do not fit the question.

The Eighth Schedule now lists 22 languages; Konkani and Nepali were added in 1992 by the 71st Amendment and Sindhi in 1967 by the 21st.

Answer: D

The most recent inclusion among these is Dogri.

The Constitution (Ninety-second Amendment) Act, 2003, which came into force in January 2004, added four languages to the Eighth Schedule: Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali. That brought the total to 22 languages.

Kashmiri has been in the Schedule since the Constitution came into force in 1950. Angika and Bhojpuri are not yet in the Eighth Schedule, despite long-standing demands for their inclusion.

Answer: A

The correct matching is (a)-(ii), (b)-(i), (c)-(v), (d)-(vi), (e)-(iv), (f)-(iii).

• Malayalam: Kerala
• Konkani: Goa
• Marathi: Maharashtra
• Gujarati: Gujarat
• Kannada: Karnataka
• Kuduk (Kurukh): Jharkhand, spoken by the Oraon community

The other options pair Malayalam with Goa or Konkani with Kerala, and the second and fourth also send Marathi to Jharkhand and Kuduk to Maharashtra or Gujarat, which is wrong.

Answer: D

The answer is Manipur.

Nagaland has English as its sole official language, Meghalaya has English with Khasi and Garo, and Mizoram has English with Mizo, each by state law. Manipur's Official Language Act names Manipuri (Meiteilon) as the State's official language, and English is not declared alongside it, so Manipur is the State that has not declared English as its official language.

Some reference lists show English as an additional language in Manipur, so the keyed answer rests on the Act naming only Manipuri.

Answer: C

After Hindi, the Indian language with the most speakers is Bengali.

Bengali is the language of Bangladesh as well as West Bengal, Tripura and parts of Assam, which gives it well over 250 million speakers worldwide, the largest number for any Indian language after Hindi. Even within India, the 2011 Census places it second after Hindi.

Telugu (third in India), Tamil and Malayalam all have far fewer speakers worldwide than Bengali.

Answer: D

Lists ii and iii are correct, so the answer is ii and iii are correct.

The South Dravidian (Dakshin Dravida) branch includes Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Tulu and the Nilgiri languages such as Toda, Kota and Badaga. So lists ii (with Tulu) and iii (with Toda) are both made up of South Dravidian languages.

List i is wrong because Gondi belongs to the South-Central branch, and list iv is wrong because Malto, spoken in Jharkhand, belongs to the North Dravidian branch with Kurukh and Brahui. Any option containing i or iv is therefore wrong.

Answer: C

It is Honduras.

Spanish is the official language. Garifuna, Miskito and other indigenous languages are spoken along the Caribbean coast.

Answer: C

It is Kosovo.

Albanian and Serbian are both official languages, with Turkish, Bosnian and Romani given official status at municipal level where their speakers are concentrated.

Answer: B

It is Serbia.

Serbian is official in Serbia and is unusual in being written in both Cyrillic and Latin, with full digraphia - every speaker reads both, and the two scripts map onto each other letter for letter.

Answer: C

It is Turkey.

Turkish is the official language of Turkey and, with Greek, of Cyprus. The alphabet was changed from Arabic to Latin in 1928 as part of Ataturk's reforms.