World Metropolises
The city with the most speakers of Japanese
Tokyo
Boston's second-most-spoken language
Spanish
This language has the most speakers worldwide
Mandarin Chinese
For most of human history, this—not monolingualism—was the norm in cities, empires, and border regions
Multilingualism
This language's kanji characters are derived from Chinese
Japanese
The city with the most speakers of German
Berlin
Boston neighborhood with the largest portion of non-native speakers of English
Chinatown
Term to refer to languages at risk of disappearing
endangered languages
Language used by educated Europeans for centuries to facilitate communication across borders
Latin
This language is distinguished from Hindi primarily only in its writing system
Urdu
The city with the most speakers of English
New York City
Consonant famously dropped in the "Boston accent"
r
United States
This term refers to a language used for communication between different language groups
lingua franca
This nation devised an original writing system in the 15th century that is still used today
Korea
The city with the most speakers of Spanish
Boston neighborhood with the largest portion of non-native speakers of English
Chinatown
Name one of the 5 countries with more than 10 official languages
Bolivia, India, Zimbabwe, Mali, South Africa
Merchants along this trade network routinely spoke multiple languages to conduct business across Asia, Africa, and Europe
Silk Road
The Cyrillic alphabet, used by Russian and other Slavic languages, was largely based on this earlier European alphabet
Greek
The city with the most speakers of French
Kinshasa
This language is among the ten most spoken in Boston, but not among the ten most spoken in the U.S.
Portuguese (or Cape Verdean Creole)
Over 800 languages are spoken in this country
Papua New Guinea
First empire to guarantee the equality of all languages in its constitution (in 1867)
Austro-Hungarian
This island has an as-yet undeciphered script
Easter Island