The languages people are worst at recognizing

A teacher teaches Arabic language to Muslim students inside a classroom at Al-Markazie islamic institute in Balo-i town, Lanao Del Norte, southern Philippines, September 9, 2017.

What language do you think this song is in?

The answer is Kannada, a language spoken by around 40 million people in south India. If you guessed wrong, you’re not alone—Kannada was the least-recognizable language in a study of which languages people are most likely to confuse with others.

Released last year, the study draws on millions of answers from The Great Language Game, where players listen to a short audio clip of someone speaking, and try to identify the language. (Not unlike Quartz’s own guess-the-language game.) When people heard Kannada, they guessed right only about 40% of the time.

Least-recognized languages

Language Correct guesses
Kannada 39%
Fijian 41.5
Shona 43.87
Dinka 44.13
Hausa 44.5
Tigrinya 45.53
South Efate 45.86
Dari 46.38
Maltese 47.98
Indonesian 49.38

Most-recognized languages

Language Correct guesses
French 93.63%
German 91.26
Spanish 89.16
Italian 88.88
Russian 87.27
Korean 86.76
Japanese 85.97
Mandarin 85.94
Vietnamese 84.17
Cantonese 83.15

The main reason Kannada is so often misheard is not to do with the language itself. It’s because players confuse it for other Indian languages. In the analysis, Kannda being mistaken for Punjabi was the most common error of any two language combinations. Over half the time, when people heard an audio clip of Kannada, they chose Punjabi or Hindi instead. Many of the other pairs of languages that people mix up belong to the same language family.

Language Confused for Likelihood of confusion
Kannada Punjabi 54.98%
Malayalam Punjabi 54.51
Kannada Hindi 53.27
Somali Arabic 53.08
Tigrinya Kurdish 52.78
Tigrinya Arabic 52.62
Sinhalese Punjabi 52.61
Gujarati Punjabi 51.85
Dari Farsi 51.38
Malayalam Hindi 51.36

While this shows people guessing wrong a lot of the time, they are surprisingly good at recognizing language groups, even if they are not the best at identifying particular languages. Great Language Game players might have confused Kannada for Hindi, but at least they guessed an Indian language. There are exceptions, however: Malay, for example, was often identified as Kurdish, and people frequently answered “Hebrew” after hearing Scottish Gaelic.

The most widely recognized language, meanwhile, was French. People guessed that one right 94% of the time.

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