Can We Guess What Language You Spoke in a Past Life?

WORLD

By: Zoe Samuel

5 Min Quiz

Image: Bartosz Hadyniak/E+/Getty Images

About This Quiz

Past lives creates a lot of opportunities to speak languages other than modern English. Indeed, if you look back in time, you will find that even languages themselves evolve, becoming unrecognizable over time. Not only did modern English evolve from a Germanic language mixed with medieval French, some historians believe that the English of Elizabethan England spoke with something that would, to modern ears, sound like a Jamaican accent. French, likewise, traces its roots to Romance, an earlier Frankish tongue. Spanish spawned Ladino, a medieval dialect still spoken in some communities in Morocco. Chinese of course comes in many flavors, with classical, written Chinese in one corner, and the myriad dialects of the spoken language everywhere else. Indigenous peoples from Australia to Arizona have languages whose ancient ancestors are lost to history, for they did not have written language and thus, no Rosetta Stone.

In your past life, it's likely that you were from some place that spoke a language you don't speak now, and may never be able to learn. It is curious, since the languages we speak are proven to impact the way we think about things; people who speak languages with male and female tenses will refer to nouns deemed female with feminine adjectives and male objects with male ones, meaning the speaker of one language may call a bridge "strong" while another would call it "graceful". Are you ready to find out what tongue was in your mouth in a past life? Take this quiz and find out!

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