WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel are speaking in a variety of tongues this week.
Last week's challenge
Start with the phrase Valentine’s Day. Rearrange the letters to spell three words (4,4,5), one of them a proper noun, that could describe what ninth century Pope Valentine might have worked to do.
Answer: DENY EVIL SATAN
THIS WEEK'S CATEGORY: LANGUAGES
On-air questions: Proclaimed by UNESCO in 1999, and formally recognized by the U.N. General Assembly in 2008, February 21 is International Mother Language Day. It promotes linguistic and cultural diversity and multiculturalism. In honor of this observance, our quiz this week is about languages.
1. In December of 2013, a man using sign language to interpret a speech given by President Obama was later found to be a fraud after his hand and arm movements didn't match what Obama was saying. At what world leader's funeral did this take place?
2. Incubus, a 1965 B-movie starring William Shatner, is one of two feature-length films in which the entire dialogue is spoken in what language, invented in 1887 by L.L. Zamenhof as an easy-to-learn politically-neutral language?
3. BASIC, an acronym for "Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code," is a computer programming language originally designed to help non-science majors to use computers. At what Hanover, New Hampshire college was BASIC developed?
4. "The Man From Another Place," played by actor Michael Anderson, spoke in a distinct otherworldly-sounding version of English. This effect was achieved by taping Anderson's dialogue, reversing it, having him repeat the reversed version, and then re-reversing it in editing. On what 1990s David Lynch drama did this character appear?
5. Put these languages in order by the number of countries of which they are the official language, from highest to lowest: Spanish, Portuguese, French.
Extra credit
1. Coined in 1973, and brought to national attention through a controversial decision by the school board in Oakland, Calif., what term is commonly (and sometimes derogatorily) used for the language referred to by linguists as African-American Vernacular English?
2. The Macedonian, Bulgarian, and Kazakh languages all use a subset or a variation of what alphabet?
This week's challenge
Start with a seven-letter word starting with B that names a language. Rearrange the letters to spell another seven-letter word starting with B that names a person who speaks a different language. What is the language and who is the person?
ANSWERS
On-air questions
1. Nelson Mandela
2. Esperanto
3. Dartmouth College
4. Twin Peaks
5. French (29 countries), Spanish (21), Portuguese (10)
Extra credit
1. Ebonics
2. Cyrillic
