Mutual intelligibility
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In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a property exhibited by a set of languages when speakers of any one of them can readily understand all the others without intentional study or extraordinary effort. It is sometimes used as one criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, though sociolinguistic factors are also important.
Intelligibility between languages can be asymmetric, with speakers of one understanding more of the other than speakers of the other understand of the first. It is when it is relatively symmetric that it is characterized as 'mutual'. It exists in differing degrees among many related or geographically proximate languages of the world, often in the context of a dialect continuum.
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[edit] Intelligibility
For individuals to achieve moderate proficiency or understanding in a language (called L2) other than their mother tongue or first language (L1) typically requires considerable time and effort through study and/or practical application. However, for those many groups of languages displaying mutual intelligibility, namely, those, usually genetically related languages, similar to each other in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, or other features, speakers of one language usually find it relatively easy to achieve some degree of understanding in the related language(s). Languages mutually intelligible but not genetically related may be creoles and parent languages, or geographically adjacent variants of two unrelated languages.
However, intelligibility among languages can vary between individuals or groups within a language population, according to their knowledge of various registers and vocabulary in their own language, their interest in or familiarity with other cultures, psycho-cognitive traits, and other factors.
[edit] Asymmetry
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Asymmetries often exist in intelligibility between languages. For example, many Spanish speakers report substantially greater difficulty in attempting to understand Portuguese in spoken form than vice versa. Similarly, many Icelandic speakers understand Swedish much more easily than the other way round, because Icelandic has preserved several archaic features of Scandinavian languages that the others have lost.
[edit] Mutually intelligible languages or variants of one language?
According to some definitions, two or more languages that demonstrate a sufficiently high degree of mutual intelligibility should properly not be considered two distinct languages but, in fact, multiple variants of the same language. Conversely, it is sometimes the case that different varieties of what is considered the same language—according to popular belief, governmental stance, or historical convention—are not, in fact, mutually intelligible in practice. (For more on this, see Dialect, and Dialect continuum—as well as Diasystem and Diglossia for two closely related but distinct language forms.)
[edit] Selected list of mutually intelligible languages
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[edit] Written and spoken forms
[edit] Indo-European
- Germanic
- Afrikaans, Dutch, and the most western forms of Low Saxon.
- German, most Low Saxon dialects, Yiddish, southern forms of the Limburgish dialect of Dutch, Luxembourgish all rooted in mainly German vocabulary.
- Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. The three are considered to compose the Mainland Scandinavian group. Written Danish and the Bokmål form of Norwegian are particularly close, though the phonology and prosody of all three languages differ somewhat. Proficient speakers of any of the three languages can understand the others, though studies have shown that speakers of Norwegian generally understand both Danish and Swedish far better than Swedes or Danes understand any of the other languages. (See Scandinavian languages for more on this debate; see also Differences between Norwegian Bokmål and Standard Danish.)
- English and Lowland Scots
- Slavic
- Belarusian and Ukrainian - two languages having the same root - Ruthenian language, both have many similarities to Polish. Ukrainians and Belarusians understand Polish much better than Poles do their languages (a Pole generally understands Ukrainian language much better, than Belarusian one, thanks to more similar pronunciation).
- Belarusian and Russian - thanks to similar pronunciation.
- Bulgarian and Macedonian - the eastern group of the South Slavic branch. Bulgarians also understand the spoken form of the other Slavic languages to a lesser or greater degree. Bulgarians can understand the more obscure spoken Slavic languages better if they are written down since a lot of the words are the same but are pronounced or written slightly differently.
- Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian (also previously classified as one language, Serbo-Croatian) in the western group of the South Slavic branch.
- Polish, Slovak, Czech and Sorbian are ethnically close - all of them of the West Slavic branch
- Romance
- Spanish, Ladino, Portuguese and Galician have a high degree of mutual intelligibility, but speakers of Portuguese seem to understand Spanish, Ladino and Galician more easily than the other way round.
- Catalan and Occitan.
- Standard Italian and Corsican.
- Romanian, Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and Moldovan; the latter is identical to Romanian.
- Romanian and Italian show a limited degree of asymmetrical mutual intelligibility: speakers of Romanian seem to understand Italian more easily than the other way round.
- Spanish, Portuguese and Italian speakers also share a certain degree of mutual intelligibility, especially in written language.
- Indic
- Iranian
[edit] Austronesian
- Malay and Indonesian (linguistically two slightly different variants of the same language, distinguished for political-cultural reasons). See also Differences between Malay and Indonesian
- There is a degree of mutual intelligibility among some of the Polynesian languages. For example, when James Cook visited New Zealand in the late 18th century, he was able to communicate with Māori people through a Tahitian chief named Tupaea who was travelling with him. Generally, Tupaea and the Māori were able to understand each other fairly well, but on some occasions even Tupaea was baffled.
[edit] Dravidian
[edit] Sino-Tibetan
- Spoken: most Chinese dialects are not mutually intelligible. [1] Here is a brief overview:
- Mandarin: Taiwanese Mandarin and Standard Mandarin are 95% mutually intelligible. Overall, the mean correlation between Mandarin dialects is 66.8%. [2]
- Min Nan: Quanzhou speech, Xiamen (Amoy) speech, Zhangzhou speech and Taiwanese are 98% mutually intelligible. Chaozhou (Teochew) speech has an overall 50.4% mutual intelligibility with Xiamen speech. [3]
- Written: most Chinese dialects lack a standardized written language. Non-Mandarin speakers are taught how to read Standard Mandarin in school. As a result, there has not been an urgent need to develop writing systems for other dialects. In recent years, an increasing number of non-Mandarin speakers have become interested in developing written systems for their own respective dialects (either by using Chinese Characters, or using Romanized script). See Identification of the varieties of Chinese for more information. For a phonological and lexical comparison of major Sino-tibetan languages, see Sino-Tibetan Swadesh lists.
[edit] Tai-Kadai
- Thai, Shan and Laotian
- Laotian and the Isan Thai language. The two are extremely similar and may in fact be variants of one language.
- Zhuang and Bouyei
[edit] Turkic
- Oghuz
- Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz, and Salar
- Qashqai: closely related to Azerbaijani
- Turkish, Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Crimean Tatar, Gagauz, and Salar
[edit] Finno-Ugric
- Finnish, Meänkieli, Kven and Karelian.
- Estonian, Livonian and Votic. Finnish and Estonian speakers also share a certain degree of mutual intelligibility, especially in written language.
[edit] Niger-Congo
[edit] Afro-Asiatic
- Many Berber variants, especially Northern Berber variants (sometimes known collectively as Tamazight)
- Some geographically distant dialects (varieties) of Arabic, as Levantine Arabic and Maghreb Arabic or Chadian Arabic (yet, they are still mutually intelligible to a certain degree).
[edit] Constructed languages
- Interlingua, Catalan, Occitan, standard Italian, Spanish, Ladino, Portuguese, Corsican and Galician are mutually intelligible.
[edit] Spoken form only
- Indo-European
- Tajik and Persian (including Dari)
- Bukhori (Judeo-Bukhari-Persian) and Tajik
- Hindi and Urdu (see also Hindustani language), and also Punjabi to a certain degree
- Bengali, Oriya and Assamese in the standard spoken forms. Not all dialects may be mutually intelligible.
- Slavic languages - most neighboring languages are mutually intelligible
- Turkic
[edit] Written form only
- All Chinese languages share the same written standard. However, this is not the case if vernacularisms or direct representations of the spoken forms are used.
- Speakers of any modern Chinese dialects have little difficulty in reading post-Warring States classical Chinese literature usually upon completion of secondary education.
- Written Chinese can be read to some degree by Koreans familiar with hanja, the old style of Korean writing using Chinese characters.
- Written Chinese can usually be read to a limited degree by those proficient in Japanese; the reverse can be true to a lesser extent although the wide use of phonetical characters (kana) in written Japanese hinder this.
- Those proficient in Icelandic can read Old Norse with little difficulty.
- Speakers of Modern Greek can read Classical Greek with little difficulty.
- Modern Hebrew speakers can generally read Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew with little difficulty.
- Scottish Gaelic and Irish, sister variants of the Goidelic Celtic branch, see the Differences between Scottish Gaelic and Irish
- Cornish, Breton, and some southern Welsh dialects, sister languages of the Brythonic Celtic branch
- Italian and French are intelligible to a small degree when in written form, although speakers of Italian usually find it easier to understand written French than the opposite.
- Though their degrees of mutual intelligibility vary in spoken form, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Interlingua are highly mutually intelligible in written form.
- Native Portuguese speakers usually read Spanish seamlessly, with the help of a dictionary for less common words or words derived from archaic (for Portuguese) root forms. The same does not always apply to Spanish speakers.
- Slavic languages written in Cyrillic alphabet are intelligible to a medium degree. It affects relation between East Slavic languages (Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and Rusyn) and South Slavic languages (Serbian, Bosnian, Macedonian and Bulgarian).
[edit] Sign languages
- British Sign Language, Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language are mutually intelligible to some degree.
- Catalan Sign Language, Valencian Sign Language and Spanish Sign Language are mutually intelligible in a very basic degree.
[edit] List of selected related languages not mutually intelligible
[edit] Indo-European
- Many Germanic languages, though related, are generally not mutually intelligible.
- The Frisian language is the closest living cousin to English (after Scots), both being descended from the Anglo-Frisian group, but the two tongues are not mutually intelligible.
- Swedish-, Norwegian-, and Danish-speakers have difficulty understanding Icelandic.
- Romance languages:
- French is not mutually intelligible with Italian, Spanish, Portuguese or Romanian.
- Romanian is typically not mutually intelligible with Spanish, Portuguese or French, though Romanian speakers may understand a small amount of these spoken languages.
- Latvian and Lithuanian, the two biggest surviving Baltic languages, are not mutually intelligible, despite having similar grammar.
- Standard Greek is generally not mutually intelligible with Greek dialects, who developed in isolated communities such as Griko and Pontic Greek.
- Slavic languages are related and to various degrees mutually intelligible. Asymmetrical mutual intelligibility exists between Bulgarian and Macedonian on one hand and the other Slavic languages on the other. This is because Bulgarian and Macedonian have distinctly different grammar. Bulgarian speakers understand other Slavs easier than the other way round.
- Russian and Polish are largely not mutually intelligible although Ukrainian is mutually intelligible to some degree to both, being believed by many to be an intermediary form in the dialect continuum.
[edit] Other language groups
- Many spoken languages and dialects of Chinese are not mutually intelligible, such as Mandarin and Cantonese. In addition, various groups of Min dialects, for example Min Nan and Min Dong, are not mutually intelligible.
- Oral Modern Mandarin is not mutually interlligible with oral Ancient Mandarin due to the changes of pronunciation of some words, plus the change of the grammar and usage.
- Oral Ancient Mandarin of different dinasties of China are not mutually interlligible, especially those which are several centuries apart, because of the changes of pronunciation.
- Malay and Indonesian are not mutually intelligible with Tagalog or Cebuano.
- Hungarian and Finnish or Estonian are not mutually intelligible to any extent.
[edit] List of selected mutually intelligible languages now extinct
- Biblical Hebrew, Moabite, Edomite, Ammonite and Phoenician. The first four of these formed the closely-related South Canaanite language language group and are sometimes termed "Hebrew languages".
- Various Germanic languages in antiquity and the early Middle Ages, including Old Norse, Old English, and Old Saxon were mutually intelligible, as were Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic to each other.
- Faroese (not extinct) and Norn
- Old Avestan and Vedic Sanskrit
- Latin (nearly extinct) and Faliscan
- Dalmatian and eastern Italian variants may have had some intelligibility
[edit] See also
- Lexical similarity
- Non-convergent discourse
- Multilingualism
- Identification of the varieties of Chinese
- Differences between Norwegian Bokmål and Standard Danish
- Differences between Scottish Gaelic and Irish
- Differences between Spanish and Portuguese
- Differences in standard Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian
- Differences between Malay and Indonesian
- Dialect continuum
- Dialect levelling
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