It’s the Little Differences That Matter

Most writers and editors who work in English will encounter at least the occasional word or phrase from another language. To spot potential problems, it’s a good idea to know some of the conventions of the more commonly used languages, the subject of chapter 11 in CMOS.

To test your knowledge—and to learn about some of the things that distinguish other languages from English—take the quiz.

Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual (cited in the answers). (We also offer a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online.)

Note: Style guides sometimes disagree. Except for a few details that can be verified in standard dictionaries and encyclopedias and other readily available sources, the answers in this quiz rely on the information in The Chicago Manual of Style.

[Editor’s note: This quiz relies on and links to the 17th edition of CMOS.]

Chicago Style Workout 78: Other Languages

1. English is written in the Latin alphabet, which is also known as the Roman alphabet.

True

False

2. In French and Spanish, adjectives derived from proper nouns are normally capitalized: la langue Française (the French language), la lengua Española (the Spanish language).

True

False

3. Quotation marks that look „like this“ are used in which language?

Italian

German

French

4. Peking and Beijing are the names of two different cities in China.

True

False

5. To get the original English version of a text translated from English into another language, it’s usually acceptable to retranslate the text back into English.

True

False

6. The Russian alphabet, which consists of thirty-three letters (А а, Б б, В в, . . . Я я), is also known as

Cyrillic

Coptic

7. In the German phrase deutsche Literatur (German literature), why is Literatur capitalized?

Because it’s a noun

Because it’s modified by a proper adjective

8. In the Hawaiian language, the name of the largest Hawaiian island is spelled Hawai’i (with an apostrophe).

True

False

9. Which language includes the consonants ð (eth) and þ (thorn)?

Icelandic

Polish

10. The general process of mapping one writing system to another is called

transliteration

romanization

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Dictionary entry for the word language, by Art of Success / Adobe Stock. [This image replaces an earlier one, which contained errors.]

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