Talk:Mutual intelligibility/Archive 1

Vietnemese

Can anyone clarify whether Vietnamise is closer to Cantonese or Cambodian? Is there any intelligibility among them?

I am not aware of the degree of intelligibility between Vietnamese and Cambodian, however, I am aware that they are classified in the same language family, whereas Cantonese is not, which would therefore lead to the assumption that the languages are not mutually intelligible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.104.252.12 (talk) 11:28, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

For the second question, shortly: no, there is no intelligibity at all between the three of them. For the first one, some elaboration is needed. The Vietnamese language is classified in the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic language family which includes Cambodian (Khmer). However, the connection might be weak/inaccurate or too distant in the past so both on the linguistic and ethnic side, Vietnamese do not have many shared features with Khmer and the two people do not feel related (actually they did not have contacts with each other until some centuries ago when the Vietnamese colonized the South - the history of Vietnam as an unified nation dated back 4000 years ago). On the other side, Vietnamese and Cantonese are in completely separate language family, which are Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan respectively (note that Afghan and English are in the same family). However, Vietnamese and Cantonese people do share some feelings of relatedness: both trace their origin to vaguely-documented Yueh ("Viet") peoples of South China and for one thousand years, Vietnam was an internal part of China which could promote immigration and miscegenation (Vietnamese looks more similar to Southern Chinese than Southeast Asians). Other factors are that Vietnamese and Cantonese are both tonal language which makes them sound somewhat similar to outsiders and Vietnamese language is heavily influenced by Chinese language due to historical reasons. From a native Vietnamese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MinhV (talk • contribs) 00:27, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Hebrew

As far as I know, Modern Hebrew was basically a 'reconstructed' langugae using Biblical Hebrew root words, but only loosely based on it. And though a modern Hebrew speaker can read the letters of Biblical Hebrew, will not actually understand anything that it says, or very little. Its like saying that I as an Arabic speaker can read Urdu, of course I can read it, and Farsi too, but I have no idea what the words mean, its just gibberish that I can pronounce. Mediterraneo 22:30, 8 July 2006 (UTC)Mediterraneo

It's true that Modern Hebrew is to some extent 'reconstructed', but it's not at all like you described. To a Modern Hebrew speaker, Biblical Hebrew is roughly as hard to understand as Shakespeare is for a Modern English speaker. That is, one can easily get most of the meaning when reading Biblical Hebrew, though occasional words will be unfamiliar and occasional phrases will be misunderstood. A large part of the grammar (morphology and syntax) is the same or very similar, and more than 95% of the Biblical vocabulary is alive in Modern Hebrew, though sometimes the meanings are different (as is the case with Shakespeare's vocabulary). It's nothing at all like Arabic and Urdu or Farsi. Modern Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew are very much more similar to each other than any modern colloquial dialect of Arabic is to Classical Arabic.

== German...

Are standard dutch and Hochdeutsch (High German) intelligible?

• I'd say no - one can "puzzle it out" (as one can with the Scandinavian languages) - but according to the definition they are not really mutually intellegible. As far as I know, Dutch is more closely related to Low German anyway ... maybe somebody would like to comment on how mutually intelligible they are? Elf-friend 08:52, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I - a Dutch speaker - haven't ever heard Low German spoken, but I'm perfectly able to understand the Plattdüütsch wikipedia... does that count? Benji man

Yes, it counts. If you also able to understand it without much effort I guess that consitute as mutually intelligible. Low German (Plattdüütsch) and Dutch is also in the list. Concerning Dutch and High German it is a little more difficult and someone can't call it mutually intelligible. I (native German) just learn Dutch. While it was quite is easy for me to grasp many dutch words and sometimes entire sentences, it isn't enough to understand whole texts without difficulty. Some work is needed to do that (at least for me :-)). But my region is more in the upper German area. I guess a Plattdüütsch speaker is able to read and understand Dutch without much effort. As Elf-friend pointed out someone who speaks either Dutch or Afrikaans can puzzle out quite alot of German and vice versa. If someone also speaks reasonably good English it also easier for a German, but less helpful for a Dutch or Afrikaans speaker because the anglo and french influence is bigger in Dutch and Afrikaans than it is in German. --Lucius1976 15:06, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I can ad to this that I, as a native Norwegian, understand Danish an Swedish perfectly. With the knowledge from the three Scandinavian languages, combined with the english (fluently) and German (fairly good) from school, I find that I am able to understand enough of a Dutch and Plattdüütsch texts (when read) to get the overall picture. Spoken Dutch and Plattdüütsch however is another story..--Njård 23:32, 12 January 2006 (UTC)---> would it be fair to say that the difference between Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish is similar to that of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian? All mutually intelligible but with sufficient differences, but that do not hamper mutual intelligibility?

Well, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian differ a lot less because they share the same spelling other than the spelling of yat (archaic letter). Also, they use slightly different lexicon, but they are as mutually intelligible as different accents of English. Compare American English and British English: different word usage, some spelling differences, and several phonetic differences. This is related to the fact that the entire area has a dialect continuum and those three languages are only the three standards for the continuum. -Iopq 09:04, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The page says that German is intelligble for Dutch speakers. I doubt this can be done without studying. The reason why many Dutch people can understand German is that German is thaught at Dutch highschools intensively. I don't think there exists much mutual intelligibility between Dutch and German. Januari 2006

German and Yiddish

How could their written forms be mutually intelligible when they use entirely different alphabets?! Even if you converted the Yiddish (Hebrew) letters into German (Roman) ones, the spelling is so different it wouldn't be easy to follow. Yiddish-German should go in the "spoken forms only" section.

Recently I've just done edits on this. :-) --Edmundkh 17:40, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

German and Dutch

What about this relation? Dutch has been considered a German dialect for a long time. Dutch text can be read to more than 80% by Germans and most Dutch people have no problem understanding Germans. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.5.247.63 (talk) 08:59, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

All I can contribute is an unsourced claim: A speaker of Standard German will normally not understand spoken Dutch. He will probably be able to read Dutch to some extent, but I would not call that "mutual intelligibility". As there is (at least among the remaining few dialect speakers) a dialect continuum between Dutch and German, i.e. old fashioned rural dialects on either side of the border hardly differ. That means that in the border region, Germans who speak dialect or are used to hear local dialet will have not trouble understanding Dutch dialect and little trouble understanding Standard Dutch. I do not know if speakers of Standard Dutch can understand spoken or written Standard German. Unoffensive text or character (talk) 13:23, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

I am a near native speaker of French (I coem from a country were it is everybody's second language), and I can pretty much understand around 80% of texts written in Italian, Spanish or Portuguese. I have also witnessed more than once Italians and Spaniards speaking to each other, each in their own language, so shouldn't they be considered mutually intelligible?

I don't agree with whoever put French as intelligible with Spanish, Portugese and Italian. I'm hispanophone, and I understand a lot portuguese and italian even though I never studied them. I speak fluent french, but because I've studied it and I live in Québec. I understood too little before that, so "in my opinion", French is not mutually intelligible with those other three languages. Anyone has another point of view on that?

You are certainly right. French is not mutually intelligible with Portuguese, Spanish or Italian. Among these, Portuguese and Spanish qualify, especially among educated speakers. Tsferreira 11:16, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

To add to the last comment, I (Native Spanish speaker) agree 100% that French is not mutually intelligible with Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese. In addition, Spanish in my view is closer to Portuguese then Italian in both it's written and spoken forms. Although I now also speak Portuguese, I did not need prior training to understand spoken Portuguese, and exposure and practice is what was needed in order to speak it. Italian on the other hand is slightly more difficult to understand when spoken. Italian is just different enough from Spanish that a conversation is very hard to accomplish (we may get the general idea of what is said for the most part), as opposed to Portuguese where, with slow and clear pronunciation a conversation is possible. June 6,2006

I believe Spanish and Portuguese are indeed mutually intelligible considering that the two languages are actually very similar (see Differences between Spanish and Portuguese for further details). Having said that, my experience is that very few native Spanish speakers actually manage to become fluent speakers of proper Portuguese and, vice-versa, very few Lusophones are capable of speaking proper Spanish. The reason is that, paradoxically, the two languages are so close that interference from one's native language is inevitable when trying to speak the other, leading to the common Portuguese-Spanish mixture otherwise known as portuñol.

In my Spanish class the ONLY person to ever get 100% on a test was a Lusophone. The

Hispanophones didn't manage to actually spell correctly and generally thought it ::would be an easy class and failed. The most dedicated Anglophones got the second ::best marks. -Iopq 14:32, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Therefore Spanish and Portuguese are mutually intelligible when forced to converse (and certainly in their read and written form). However, there is not a natural fluency and one would only attempt a conversation when absolutly needed. Thus to both language speakers to properly speak eachother's language still need training and exposure. Having learned proper Portuguese in school, I can say this: For the native Spanish speakers in the class it was almost harder to learn it properly then for those who spoke no Spanish, and this is because of the reason you state above, that there is a natural tendency to revert to Spanish or pronouce it as this mix called Portuñol, as to a native spanish speaker, and vice-versa, it feels like speaking it with a different sound of the same word, for the most part, albeit with enough completely different words to add to the confusion.

(I'm a Portuguese Native Speaker)French are really not mutually intelligible with Portuguese or Spanish and I belive neither Italian (although I'm not really sure). I still claim that Portuguese and Spanish are almost fully mutually intelligible. Portuñol is really true in its existence, but even though a Spanish speaker and Portuguese speaker can keep a very long conversation!!!:-) Italian in written form is comprehensible, but in its spoken form, we must be patient with each others. Romanian no way. But Catalan and Galician are even comprehensible.

Thank you for that native Portuguese speaker. It only makes sense, since even between Spanish and Portuguee speakers there exists a very close to full mutual intelligibility, then obviously between EP and BP it is riduculous to suggest otherwise, as our misguided and misinformed friend from above clearly shows us. Native speakers of EP and BP can converse just fine, as so can people from Spain and Spanish America, and also between Spanish speakers and both EP and BP. The only exception I can think of in Portuguese speakers are those from the Azores, that even mainland Portuguese have some trouble understanding, a situation not much different than Newfoundland in Canada and the Canadian mainland.

I speak decent Spanish, and I can understand some spoken Portuguese and almost all written Portuguese. However, with French I have considerably more difficulty.Cameron Nedland 13:37, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I speak Spanish, and reading Portuguese for me is like reading Shakespeare and I would say that Italian is about as difficult as Chaucer. I just read this 62-word paragraph on the Italian Wikipedia, and I can say that I have a vague idea what about 55 of the words mean, but I don't know for sure. I can take about three ideas away from it: (1) Banana Joe is involved in the banana trade, (2) that he lives in a small village in Amantido in South America, (3) that some mafia boss from San Cristobal gets involved, also, and (4) that a casino is constructed in the village. I had to read it three times, though. I also just read this 100-word paragraph and understood about 60 of the words, but get the general idea how he wasn't sucessful, although Don Quixote was popular and that he didn't try to be popular...(is that what it says?) I also had to read that several times. I agree that just listening to someone speaking Italian wouldn't work beyond single-word statements, and listening to Portuguese is much-more difficult than reading it.

On another note, I imagine that a French speaker would have less difficulty communicating with an Italian speaker than with a Spanish one given the closer historical ties between the two nations. Spaniards spoke a more-archaic Latin than what developed in Italy and France. Also, France dominated Northern Italy for many centuries, influencing the dialects there.

So, I think that there ought to be two sentences in the section: one for decent intelligibility (Spanish and Portuguese) and another for poor intelligibility (Spanish and Italian).--Join the Revolution 06:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

French is generally considered be highly mutually intelligible by the French and Italians. Not so FR vs. ES/PT (though they are to one another). As to the Quebecois, I'm not sure you're on solid ground as other francophones have a hard enough time understanding your old French :-P --Belg4mit 18:42, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

i disagree although spanish, italian, portuguese etc. are not HIGHLY mutually intelligible with French, alot of it's basic word i can actually figure out and understand (because i can speak a bit of both languages, so if i know a word in one language, i can sort of guess it may be around the same word in the other) for exampl, rire is laugh and in spanish it is risa, they base of the word is the same, also it doesn't really matter that much depend on the whole writing thing because fro example Hindi and urdu they are nearly the same but they use two different scripts to write in, but they can be understood orally, also for example Amoy Min nan chinese is related to Lán-lâng-oē, and they both have high mutual inteligibility understanding each other orally but not when using their respective scripts.... lol i probably have sonfused you all but i hope you get what i meanAustralian Jezza 07:18, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Written Chinese/Japanese

When I travelled on the trans-Siberian railway, I saw Japanese and Chinese travellers conversing with each other in writing, so it seemed to me that written Mandarin and written Japanese must be mutually intelligible. Can anyone confirm or deny? Worldtraveller 17:51, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Both languages share the usage of Chinese characters (known in Japanese as Kanji), and a large portion of them share the same meanings. However written Chinese uses entirely Chinese characters, whereas written Japanese has Chinese characters plus their own writings. The similarities reaches as far as place names and simple verbs and nouns. Therefore mutual intelligibility virtually does not exist for these two languages.

I live in Japan. The basic fundamental survival meaning is mutually inteligible. A Japanese in China or reverse can communicate, but no more. 30% of any given Japanese writing uses phonetic symbols not understood by Chinese, But the Chinese will be able to get a gist of the article.--Jondel 09:01, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sorry but Kanji is based on old Han characters and many of them are a little different from traditional or even simplified chinese. They were probably well educated in old writing to be doing this

A little different doesn't make them unreadable. An modern English speaker can still understand Shakespeare.

They are based on Chinese characters from the sixth century. Here's some sixth century English:

Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

-Iopq 18:14, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Although allegedly it'd be easier for a Chinese to read 6th century Chinese, than for instance an Englishman reading Beowulf or an Italian reading Latin. (Btw, I heard Icelanders could read Old Norse fairly well.) 惑乱 分からん 20:16, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

But the Japanese characters from that time are based on the dialect of Chang'an. There are also some later loans as well. Icelandic is very conservative, so it's not a surprise that Icelandic speakers can read Old Norse. -Iopq 23:57, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

The Chang'an article didn't mention anything about how and if the characters looked much different. The criteria here would be if a large number of Japanese characters look clearly different from both Simplified and Traditional Chinese characters. 惑乱 分からん 10:42, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Even the most basic phrases should be uncomprehensible to Japanese speakers. Some characters might be familiar enough to reconstruct a phrase guessing what it means, but come on, 大丈夫 means "all right" in Japanese and "big husband" in Chinese. -Iopq 11:42, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

That might be an exception, though. In this example, I think the Japanese word took on a figurative meaning, based on the notion that it was alright to have a big, strong husband in the house. Of course this example is basically unintelligible, but I'm not sure how common such examples are (when one or both of the language has shifted the meaning of characters notably). 惑乱 分からん 11:54, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Chinese characters were often used to write Japanese words using only their pronunciation. In that case, the result is also incomprehensible to Chinese language speakers. There's also a handful of kanji that were invented in Japan. But, if anything, it would be easier for an educated Japanese person to understand some written Chinese by recognising some radicals of characters that are not in Japanese. But without knowledge of kana it would be impossible for a Chinese person to read Japanese because he wouldn't even know the difference between a positive and a negative sentence. As far as a Japanese person understanding a Chinese text, it is very dependent on the text itself. But most Japanese can't even translate "See you next time" or something simple like that correctly. -Iopq 02:06, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Possibly some common nouns, adjectives, verbs and such could be recognized, but conjunctions and characters used similarly for grammatical functions would be much harder (?)... 惑乱 分からん 02:22, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you would have to rely mostly on singular characters or try to figure out the meaning of the compounds. Then again, knowing the actual history of the characters would help in this. There's also the problem of Chinese grammar, because it is very different from Japanese grammar. So long sentences would be pretty much uncomprehensible because the word order is different in Chinese, and it has grammatical particles and helping verbs that just don't fit into Japanese grammar. -Iopq 09:21, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Flavors of English

I had added this line to the "Related languages that are not mutually intelligible" section:

• American English, British English, Australian English and Indian English (all in their spoken forms)

This was subsequently deleted by User:Worldtraveller. Is this line incorrect? The spoken forms *are* pretty much unintelligible until the speakers get acclimatized to each others' accents, the duration of which varies with the individual. Should they not be listed here for that reason? -- Brhaspati (talk, contribs) 12:54, 2005 Feb 21 (UTC)

I removed the line from that section because I am sure most people would agree these variations of English are completely mutually intelligible. As a British English speaker, I have no difficulty whatsoever understanding Americans, Australians or Indians speaking English. I considered moving the line to mutually intelligible languages, but didn't think that was right either, because they're just regional variations of the same language rather than separate languages. I realise the divisions are arbitrary (I believe Norwegian was considered a regional variation of Swedish before the countries separated), but I thought these four dialects really fell outside the scope of the article. Worldtraveller 13:58, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I do not think Norwegian has ever been considered a regional variant of Swedish. Jørgen 21:49, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Anyone who thinks English in Britain, Australia and the USA are in any way mutually unintelligible...well, no comment. The differences are so inconsequential as to barely qualify as dialects of the same language. I've never had any trouble, as an American, communicating with anyone from those countries or in reading texts originiating from them. I can't speak with as much certainty on India, but I do know I can go to an Indian English website right now and read it with no problems whatsoever.user:Jsc1973

This are just variants of English, but no seperate languages. Putting this in here is absurd in my opinion. --Lucius1976 23:19, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

The only differences in the various flavors of English are spelling and dialect. The spelling differences are so minute that it poses no problem. As for dialect, I can understand a Brit better than I can my fellow Americans from the south. --ejail 01:23, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

But it is true, to an extent. I know that if I am listening to British English, as I speak American English, that if they speak at the same speed as me, then I often cannot understand them until I get used to the accent, or the lose a little bit of their accent. 171.66.188.90 15:22, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Chabacano is m.i. with Spanish

Chabacano is a spanish-creole. Don't know if I should list this. --Jondel 02:45, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

"Related Languages..." section

Is this section really necessary? Even if it were useful, it seems hard to set a good scope; we could theoretically list English and every other Indo-European language, for example, or Tagalog and any Austronesian language. At any rate, even if the section is kept, some of the choices seem questionable (especially Korean and Japanese).

An interesting different section may be languages that are not mutually intelligible, but intelligible one-way and unintelligible the other way. I'm not sure of any great examples, although I've heard Finnish and Estonian have a relationship like this.

I think it should really be "closely related" languages if we could find some way to define "closely". I just removed Korean and Japanese from the list since there's no strong evidence they're related at all. --Angr/_comhrá 22:14, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Russian and Polish

are m.i.languages? From the article:

• Russian, Belarussian, and Ukrainian
• Ukrainian and Polish

--Jondel 12:32, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

That's a bit iffy. Ukrainian is in some ways "between" Russian and Polish (in the same inaccurate and misleading way that Dutch could be considered "in between" English and German), but I rather doubt that the Russian-Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Polish pairs above really constitute m.i. pairs. They are borderline m.i., one might say. But Russian and Polish definitely aren't m.i. If we do grant that the claims in the article are true, this could serve as an example showing that mutual intelligibility isn't really transitive. --Iceager 21:05, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I hope this is more accurate:

• Urkranian is 'in between' or to some degree m.i. with Russian and with Polish.

--Jondel 00:14, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ukrainian is mutually intelligible with Russian, but not Polish. I have a Polish friend and I can't understand what he says. He can't understand me either. Only some words, but when I'm saying a sentence, chances are he won't understand it. -Iopq 09:16, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

So Ukranian is intelligible with Russian, but not Polish. And belorussian? Intelligible with Russian and Ukrainian? Belorussian and Polish? I've also been told Bulgarian bears close resemblance to Russian/Ukrainian, can any native speakers clarify this? Dec 6

Belarusian is very close to both Russian and Ukrainian and is mutually intelligible with both. In fact I could take most Ukrainian words, and imagine what they would be in Belarusian. It shares more vocabulary with Ukrainian, but has a more Russian-like pronunciation. Bulgarian is very far in terms of grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary from all of these. It's the LEAST mutually understandable language along with Macedonian for East Slavic speakers. -Iopq 14:44, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

For example I took the Ukrainian word rozumity and then I knew that the i is the reflex of yat, so the reflex in Belarusian would be e, the -ty ending in Russian is -t' so in Belarusian it's -ts' (-c') and akanye would make the first vowel an a. Therefore I get razumec' in Belarusian. Then I checked an online dictionary and found the word РАЗУМЕЦЬ which is the same as I suspected it would be. I can pretty much convert to Belarusian in real time, although it would create some fake words ;) -Iopq 14:55, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

So Bulgarian/Macedonian is the least mutually intelligible language for East Slavic speakers, interesting because since its written in cylliric I figured some more commonalities then that. So you are saying Serbo-Croatian is more familiar to say, a Russian, then Bulgarian is?

Bulgarian is m.i. with Russian because of their history. Bulgarians understand Russian quite well, Russians understand Bulgarian generally, but more worse, because of Bulgarian grammar system, that is quite different then the modern Russian one. But every Russian understands a written text in Bulgarian much better then a Ukrainian or a Belarusian one.

I'm Ukrainian. So, I can say, Ukrainian and Russian aren't m.i. Russians DON'T understand Ukrainian at all. Ukrainians understand Russian because of its status in the occupation period (USSR) and because it's widely spoken in Ukraine by Russians or russophones. Ukrainians who don't know Russian at all (in diaspora, egz.), cannot understand it. Belarusian is m.i. Ukrainians can understand 95% from Belarusian. In fact, Belarusian is "a Ukrainian with Baltic pronunciation". They have the same history (Ruthenian language). Polish is intelligible quite well, the unic problem is its accent's stability (ukr. rozumíty, bel. razumiéć, pol. rozúmieć), and the using of "rz", where Ukrainians have "r" (pol. rzecz, ukr. rič, bel. reč), as many others pronunciation's details. Slovak can be intelligible by Ukrainians, but Czech - not at all!193.231.140.74 18:38, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, so you are saying Ukranian is closer to Polish then to Russian? Someone else says its the opposite, that Ukranian is closer to Russian then Polish. And another contradictory statement from another poster says Bulgarian is totally different, yet you are saying it is somewhat intelligible, so which one is it? And how come czech and slovak are pretty much the same language yet you can only understand Slovak but no Czech at all?

O.k., let's see it. I'm Slav, so I can say it so, how I hear, read and undersatnd other Slavic languages. Ukrainians UNDERSTAND Russian and SPEAK Russian, but they do it because of its status of state language in USSR. To be clear, we must imagine us a Ukrainian, who didn't hear any other slavic language - so he understands Polish much better (a good example there're Ukrainians from other countries, who know ONLY Ukrainian and don't understand Russian). So, let's start: Ukrainian and Russian - problematically; Ukrainian and Belarusian - perfect; Ukrainian and Polish - quite well; Ukrainian and Slovak - something worse; Ukrainian and Czech - very problematically; Ukrainian and Bulgarian (plus Macedonian) - a really big problem; Ukrainian and Serbian - easier then Bulgarian, but difficult; Ukrainian and Croatian - something better, we can even understand each other - something like Russian, I mean, the same distance from Ukrainian, but in other part, of course; Ukrainian and Slovenian - NOTHING! It's a situation with intelligibility of Ukrainian. And something I know from other Slavic languages: Russian and Bulgarian - quite well; Russian and Belarusian - something worse; Russian and Polish+Czech+Slovak - a really big problem; Russian and Serbian - better; Russian and Croatian - worse; Russian and Slovenian - nothing... You can proove it very easy in wikipedia, or on Our Father's, on Declaration of Human Rights' texts.193.231.140.74 00:12, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

-- The comments above regarding m.i. between Ukrainian & Russian, on the one hand, and Serbian and Croatian, on the other, don't make sense. The contributor writes that Rus-Serb is "better" while Rus-Cro is "worse," and that Ukr-Serb is "difficult" while Ukr-Cro is "something better." But Serbian and Croatian are just too close for the level of intelligibility to differ so much. As for the claim that Ukrainian is as close to Croatian as it is to Russian (or, what I think is really being said: Russian's as far from Ukrainian as Croatian is) -- that's very far off the mark.

Well, the situations with Czech and Slovak, and with Russian and Bulgarian are following:

• Czech has another pronunciation, very problematic for Ukrainians, with ř (something like rzh), with -ů othe end of the words in gen.pl. (svk. -ov, ukr. -iv, bel. -aw, pol. -ów) and many other things. So for a Slovak, whom isn't important these sonds Czech is m.i. 95% (as Belarusian for Ukrainians), but for Ukrainian the Slovak lexics is some difficult, but the pronunciation is clear, and in Czech the difficulty is doubled - so Urainian generally understands Slovak (it's sounds like a Transcarpathian dialect of the same Ukrainian), but Czech - no. I hope, I explained it clear.
• Russian has another grammatical structure as Bulgarian, similary rather to Ukrainian - but Russian LEXICS is similar to Bulgarian one, so they can understand each other better. Ilubianov 00:27, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

CONFUSION NOTICED =) People, stop interchanging spoken and written m.i. For example, Russian is greatly m.i. with Bulgarian and Serbian, to the point where I can decipher a wikipedia article in them (I'm Russian) without any preparation, but nowhere near as m.i. when spoken. Also, Russian is more spoken-m.i. with Ukrainian (from a Russian POV, this says more, since Russians rarely if ever learned Ukrainian), due to the quantity of loanwords in spoken informal Ukrainian. Furthermore, to a speaker of the South Russian dialect, Ukrainian would be even more m.i. (some of the more ignorant speakers of other Russian dialects actually misinterpret South Russian to be Ukrainian). Aadieu (talk) 00:00, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I can't tell anything first-hand about mutual intelligibility of Russian and Ukrainian simply because they are both my native tongues. I assume, however, that for a Ukrainian, absolutely not exposed to the Russian language (or vice versa), it'd be very difficult to understand written formal language, and much easier to understand spoken language. On the other hand, I've read Polish books and watched Polish TV without any previous studying Polish language, and my conclusions are as follows: written Polish is more than 90% understood by any Ukrainian with high school education; spoken Polish is understood 80% or more when spoken slowly and using formal vocabulary colloquial and fast-spoken Polish is understood slightly more than 60%; Polish slang isn't understood at all.

Sahaidak, Kiev. November, 23, 2009.

______________ Polish and Russian are not readily mutually intelligible, but it is very easy for them to learn each other's language. I'm Russian, i've never learned Polish properly, i've never even been to Poland, but i've spend about 2 months reading Polish forums and watching films in Polish, and now i can understand 100%, both written and spoken. It's very easy, you only need to learn few words AND sound correspondence (how will the Russian one sound in Polish). ---Dmitry, 02.01.2010 ______________

Portuguese ~ Catalan?

Are these two really mutually intelligable? Benji man

Could a native speaker please comment. If not delete.--Jondel 00:15, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm brazilian and just tried to read something in the Catalan Wikipedia, I understood it, bot nothing more than this... --201.34.91.202 18:03, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm a native Catalan speaker and reading Portuguese is perfectly possible to me... undestanding it when spoken is not as direct. When you hear it, you feel you ought to understand it (it does have the same soft accent as Oriental Catalan -i.e. that of Barcelona and the Balearic Islands-) but then, when trying to make out what they're actually saying it's sometimes not as clear. However, I'd definetely say that Catalan speaking people understand Portuguese way more than Spanish people do, because Spanish underwent many changes that other Romanic languages did not (e--->ie in Spanish, o--->ue, etc...). For example, when swearing, "merda" is written (and sounds!) exactly the same in Catalan and Portuguese. Or, in a less scatological context: "port" (Cat.), "porto" (Por.) vs. "puerto" (Spa.)... Finally, I'll add that the reason that Portuguese is to such a degree intelligible with Catalan must be credited, at least in part, to the fact that nearly all native Catalan speakers can also speak Spanish (or are highly familiar with this language). That means that while being spoken to in Portuguese, they will mentally scroll through Catalan and Spanish possible equivalents to the words they're hearing, and restore to the most likely candidate effortlessly (and unconciously). My guess is that for an exclusively Catalan speaking person, the list of intelligibility would be (from possible to impossible): Occitan (not much effort), Italian/Portuguese (quite difficult), Spanish (weird sounds!), French (occasional understanding. Higher when read) and finally Romanian (it would be a constant: "what?"). The table mentions Friulian as well... I've never had the occasion of hearing anyone speak it. I once listened to a radion station in Romansh and did sound familiar, but it wasn't "directly" understandable. Well, congratulations dear reader: made it to the end (sorry for the long paragraph).--80.58.35.170 01:34, 6 December 2005 (UTC) ca:Usuari:Jahecaigut

I believe the phonology of Catalan is somewhat similar to European Portuguese, which helps to explain why Catalans perhaps understand Portuguese better than the Spaniards. Catalan vocabulary and grammar (similar to Occitan and some northern Italian dialects) are however quite different from Portuguese or Spanish for that matter, which makes mutual intelligibility difficult. As an educated speaker of Portuguese with knowledge of Spanish and French, I can generally read Catalan without major difficulty, but understanding the spoken language is not so easy. Nevertheless, I believe I still understand Catalan better than Italian. 161.24.19.82 20:29, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Why call Portuguese European Portuguese, or Brazilian Portuguese? Portuguese is Portuguese and it is the exact same language.with minor differences. The difference is no greater then Argentine Spanish v/s Cuban Spanish yet in Spanish this distiction is officially never used because Spanish is Spanish, just as Portuguese is Portuguese, and Engligh is English.

"As an educated speaker of Portuguese with knowledge of Spanish I can generally read Catalan without major difficulty". I would use this sentence as well, I'm in the same situation. But unfortunatelly I never heard someone speaking catalan.

I'm Brazilian. I too have tried to read the Catalan wikipedia, and I have had few problems with it. It surely is not as easy to understand as Spanish and Galician (two languages I can understand completely, even though I have never studied them), but still I consider it mutually intelligible, at least in its written form, with Portuguese. Although I've missed some words on the aricles, I can do more than just get the general idea of the texts. However, I've never heard anyone talking in Catalan, so I can't say what is the degree of mutual intelligibility Portuguese and Catalan share in the spoken form.Guinsberg 00:24, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm Brazilian. I agree with the topic that Old Portuguese is quite similar to Spanish, and we can realize some archaisms when you are really educated in Portuguese. There are many examples. So Spanish and Portuguese in my opinion, are totally mutual intelligble (they share 90% of vocabulary), of course there are some words that when spoken sounds a bit different, but the general context we can catch as much as many details. Portuguese and Fala and Galician are the same language. Italian is comprehensible when in written form, spoken form it becomes a little bit complicated to pay attention in the sentence and simultaneous translation (practice can solve it). French we can understand the general sense when reading, but it is really impossible to understand in spoken form. I've never heard Catalan, but I would place it before Italian when reading. I believe the except for French (mixed with germanic roots) and Romanian (some slavic roots), the latin languages are very, very close. Portuguese-Spanish-Italian, that are one of the "5 major latin languages", are comprehensible in writen form, and Portuguese-Spanish there are no need of previous study for a Brazilian to understand. Perhaps Catalan is the same in spoken form!!! Robledo —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.157.35.20 (talk) 19:36, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I am a Brazilian too and my attempt to read the Catalan Wikipedia article on the Russian Revolution was quite succesfull, except for a few small words and some strange verbal inflections. Latinisms and formal words flow effortlessly. However, reading about Kerenski (of whom I know very little) was less effective. I can make out the meaning of the text, but I am not sure I could translate it. jggouvea (talk) 01:51, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Sardinian ~ Italian

These two languages are not mutually intelligible as the article suggests. Italians who have an advanced understanding of Latin can understand some of the words in Sardinian, however as large percentage of the Sardinian language is from pre-Latin times the words are generally alien.

I've been in Sardinia lot of times and I have relatives there, I can confirm you that an Italian speaker can't understand Sardinian. Most of the times it's hard to understand evan a single word. Gaúcho

Sicilian ~ Italian

Despite what's written in the article, Sicilian and Italian are NOT mutually intelligible. Generally speaking, none of italian "dialects" are mutually intelligible with Italian (not Emiliano, not Venetian, not Neapolitan), but Sicilian is far less intelligibile (lexicon is heavily influenced by Arabic and, less, by Catalan and Spanish, and grammar is quite different too). Being a native Italian speaker (of umbro dialect), I understand far better Spanish and even French that Sicilian.

I completely agree. I've excluded the phrase. Dantadd 23:18, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Italian ~ Romanian

The Romanian language does have some Latin based words and is considered a variant of the Romance languages. However it is no more intelligible than English and Italian.

That's absolutely not true. Any well educated person whose mother tongue is French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian can understand a Romanian text in a fairly good extent, even if they've never studied it. That wouldn't happen with English. And Romanian does not have "some Latin based words" but the majority of its vocabulary is based in Latin words. Dantadd 23:23, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree, even though Romanian differes considerably from other Romance languages, with the exception of Italian, it is still related to all other Romance languages and thus it can still be at least partly deciphered by educated romance language speakers, certainly not the case between English and Italian as our misguided friend from the very top claims, obviously not a native speaker of any of the Latin based romance languages.

I am a native Spanish speaker highly interested in linguistics. I have had some exposure to Romanian texts and radio, and I must say that even though its Romance origins are more than obvious, it is not close enough to be mutually intelligible with its Western European cousins, except for instances where lots of neologisms and international terms are used. When reading a Romanian story or novel, there is a very large number of wholly unrecognizable words stemming either from a different Latin stock or from Slavic or Turkish traditions. On top of that, word order is also somewhat different. I can certainly read a newspaper in Romanian without much effort, as I said in part thanks to the large number of international terms, but when trying to figure out stories such as Creanga's "Povesti", I certainly can't catch but a few isolated words. IMHO Romainan is a very interesting language, that should feel proud of its origins and influences (Slavic, Hungarian, Turkish, etc.) and should by no means hide them or disregard them... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Warnerbf (talk • contribs) 02:55, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I am Italian, and while I might be able to figure out what a text in written Romanian is about, I can understand almost nothing of spoken Romanian: I might barely understand some "international" words once in a while (but so could I, e.g., when listening Russian or German). But I think that for some reason it varies from person to person: I know some Italians who claim being able to understand some Romanian without ever studying it, whereas unlike many Italians I can understand some spoken Portuguese. --80.104.234.88 (talk) 14:19, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

French ~ Occitan

I disagree with the statement in the article that French and Occitan are mutually intelligible. Occitan and Catalan are mutually intelligible (in fact, they are closely related), but both differ considerably from French. 161.24.19.82 20:22, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Cornish, Welsh and Breton

Dear Dr C,

Thank you for your message. I regret that my answer is going to be rather long and rather inconclusive.

Questions about the mutual intelligibility of languages can often be answered simply by getting speakers of the various languages together and testing to see how far they understand each other's speech. In the case of Cornish and Breton such a method is not possible, since Cornish has been extinct since the end of the eighteenth century. In a sense, therefore, the mutal intelligibility of Breton and Cornish cannot be determined. There is also a further complicating factor. Breton is highly dialectalised and one of its four main dialects, Vannetais or Gwenedeg, is very unlike the other three—particularly with regard to word stress. In the other dialects and indeed in Cornish and Welsh, the stress normally falls on the penultimate syllable. In Welsh and Cornish and the three other Breton dialects 'bread' is bára, but in Vannetais it is bará. Vannetais in fact preserves the older stress pattern, but ultimate stress plays havoc with the verbal system and thus reduces intelligibilty between Vannetais and the other dialects. In talking about Cornish and Breton, we must, I think, leave Vannetais out of the equation.

[In Welsh the stress is on the penultimate syllable, but the original final stress survives in the way in Welsh the final syllable is often pronounced less stress but a higher pitch. When a native speaker of Welsh says 'Bangor', for example, the stress is on the first syllable, but the voice goes up on the final syllable.]

It is almost certainly the case that Welsh and Cumbrian were already different from SW British, the ancestor of Cornish and Breton during the Roman occupation of Britain. This would mean that effectively Welsh and Breton have been different languages since ca AD 200.

[Cumbrian was probably extinct by the 12th century but was clearly close to Welsh. Indeed the name Cumbrian is related to Welsh Cymru 'Wales' and Cymry 'Welshmen' (< *kombrogi 'fellow-countrymen'). It is likely that the northern British called themselves 'natives' to distinguish themselves from the marauding Irish who spoke to them a partially intelligible language. The original name of the British language was probably *Brittonika, which survives now only in Brezhoneg 'Breton'.]

Another complicating factor is this: when the SW British migrated to Gaul in the fift and sixth centuries to avoid the marauding Irish (the Saxons were too far east to be of concern to them) an elite took their language to a population which already spoke a Celtic language, i.e. the Gauls of Letavia. Yet it is likely that Letavian Gaulish, like French later, was highly nasalised. At all events Breton contains several different nasal vowels that are wholly lacking in modern Welsh and do not seem to have existed in Cornish before it died. When I hear Breton speakers I am struck by the nasality of their language. This is a further factor in lessening the mutual intelligibility of Breton on the one hand and the other two Brythonic languages.

There is as further complicating factor. Although Cornish is geographically mid-way between Welsh and Breton its phonology appears to have been very different from both Welsh and Breton in a number of significant ways. Most notably earlier d, t are assibilated in Cornish to z (often written s) and s, something which is quite unknown in the other two languages. Thus: Welsh and Breton: tad 'father' but Cornish tas; Welsh pedwar 'four' but Cornish peswar. In Late Cornish, which appears to reflect the western dialect of Cornish, such s < d often appears as j or dg and thus, for example 'four' in the later language is padger.

Another significant difference between Welsh and Breton on the one hand and Cornish on the other is the phenomenon known as pre-occlusion. In Welsh and Breton one finds a historically long n or m, but in Cornish the reflexes are dn and bm. This Welsh pen 'head', Breton penn , Welsh pen but Cornish pedn. Welsh gwyn, Breton gwenn 'white' but Cornish gwydn, guidn or gwidden. (For examples of these etyma cf. penguin 'white head' < Breton, which originally meant 'awk'; LePen < Ar Penn 'the headman', the ultranationalist French politician is not French at all, but Breton)

Both d > s and pre-occlusion have the same cause. Before the Norman Conquest the West Saxons controlled Cornwall and it appears that many Celtophone Cornish were learning to speak English rather than Cornish. After the Conquest the importance of English was reduced for a couple of generations, many Bretons settled in Cornwall and links with Brittany were greatly strengthened. Almost all surviving medieval Cornish literature is based on Breton and or French models. The Cornish for 'London' is Londres (two syllables), which was borrowed from Breton from French. The diminution in the importance of West Saxon/English meant that the many of the now Anglophone Cornish learnt again to speak Cornish, but they brought into their Cornish their anglicised speech habits. The assibilation of d > s, pre-occlusion and further changes, for example, strongly stressed vowels and very weak unstressed vowels, can all be attributed to this anglicisation of the phonology of Cornish after the Norman Conquest (to which I have given the name 'the prosodic shift').

[There is onely one other Celtic language which exhibits pre-occlusion: Manx. Manx like Cornish is a Celtic language in the mouths of Germanic speakers, since Manx is Gaelic spoken by Norsemen.]

[It is likely that the Cornish originally called their language Brethonek < *Brittonika. After the migration of Bretons into Cornwall after the Norman Conquest the Cornish would have needed a new word to distinguish their language, so they called it Kernowek < *Kornowika. Actually the first instance we have of this word is as Cornowok in 1572.]

Further shifts occur in Cornish as a result of this anglicisation. The word for 'dog', for example, in Welsh is ci and in Breton ki. In Middle Cornish the word is written <ky> but we know from later sources that it was pronounced kei or koi. This again is the result of the prosodic shift. An earlier kiii has been reduced to kii where the first element is closer to e. This phenomenon can be seen throughout our surviving remains of Cornish and is particularly noticeable in the later language.

Cornish was written in a traditional spelling, partially inherited from the early Christian missionaries to Britain and partially derived from Anglo-Saxon and Norman French. Such an orthography continued to be taught to clerics in Cornwall in the college of secular canons in Glasney until it closed as a result of the Reformation in the 1540s. The traditional spelling lasted for a generation until it was replaced of necessity by varying systems based on contemporary English orthography. The difference between the traditional spelling of Middle Cornish and the English-based spelling of Late Cornish has misled some commentators into believing that Middle and Late Cornish were very different. They were not. The spelling was.

You can now see what a vexed and indeed impenetrable question you have asked. Cornish is very like Breton in origin, but by the time Cornish was moribund the two were probably very different indeed. Unfortunately we have no direct evidence, but only inferences from written sources and place-names.

Before I give you my opinion about the mutal intellibility of Cornish and Breton, let us look at the question from another angle. Welsh speakers from South Wales and from North Wales sometimes have difficulty in understanding one another. The difficulties are exaggerated, since the broadcast media have increased familiarity with the various spoken dialects, and anyway a very large and indeed increasing percentage of Welsh speakers come from anglophone backgrounds and have learnt Welsh at school rather than from their parents. Nonetheless the mutual intelligibility inside Welsh Wales is not total. With uneducated speakers the differences between Glamorganshire Welsh and Carnarvon dialect might well have led to virtually complete unintelligibility.

It is also sometimes said that 'Johnny Onion' the itinerant onion-seller from Brittany could make himself understood in Breton when in Wales. This I very much doubt. The inflection, syntax, vocabulary and phonology of all dialects of Welsh are too different for any Breton speaker to be able to do any more than understand a few words if spoken slowly. The same would be true for the Welsh speaker trying to understand a Breton.

As far as Cornish and Breton is concerned we can be reasonably certain that at the period of the Norman Conquest mutual comprehension was still fairly wide. It is likely, I think, that a Celtophone Breton and a Celtophone Cornishman of 1100-1200 would have relatively little difficulty in understanding one another. Until the early 16th century it is probable that comprehension may have been possibly as high as 50%. Thereafter however changes in both Breton and Cornish would have been such that comprehension became increasing difficult, particularly since cultural contacts diminished drastically. The putative last native speaker of Cornish is said to have been Dolly Pentreath of Mousehole, who died in 1777. If an uneducated Breton speaker from Roscoff or St Pol de Léon met her, I suspect that the degree of mutual comprehension would have been very slight. It seems to me, and I have no way of proving it, that neither of them would have been able to understand anything more than occasional words and phrases.

I am sorry this answer has been so long and indeed so inconclusive. It is such a pity we have no native speakers of Cornish. Recently the Cornish revival has been riven by acrimonious divisions about how to pronounce and spell the resuscitated language. One native speaker and our problems would have disappeared.

Yours sincerely

(Professor) N W.

To Professor W, University Tutor in Celtic Languages

Dear Mr W,
May I respectfully ask for your expert opinion on the matter of the mutual
intelligibility or otherwise of the Brythonic languages?
I am trying to establish to what extent Welsh, Breton and Cornish are
mutually intelligible. Do we observe a simple dialect continuum with Cornish
as a 'bridge' dialect or alternatively are they distinct enough to prevent a
native speaker from understanding the others?
Although German and English are not mutually intelligible, as a native
speaker of English I can understand perhaps one in 20 words of general
German conversation (equivalents of words such as finger, house etc,
personal pronouns & some verb endings). This is not quite enough to
understand a conversation, yet German is clearly more familiar to me than
many other European or more exotic languages would be. There are clearly
therefore 'degrees' of mutual intelligibility, and I wonder to what extent
the above Celtic languages now differ. In the literature there are many
reports of traditional speakers of Cornish being able to communicate
effectively in Brittany, yet the prevailing comment today is mostly
contradictory.
With many thanks in advance for your comment to an amateur student of
language.
Dr Chris C —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.132.110.38 (talk) 21:20, 7 November 2007 (UTC) 

There is quite a debate on the Talk:Welsh language page about whether these are in fact mutually intelligible. There doesn't seem to be a firm consensus one way or the other. --Telsa 16:02, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Erm - I think for this page we should not put it in - I'm a native Welsh speaker and I have listened to Cornish on the Radio and tried to read it and not got very far - what I have noticed though is that although Cornish has a stock basic vocabularly which evolved on its own up until the native extinction in the 18th century - which seems to be quite evolved away from Welsh - syntax and orthography especially. I think since the revival that many more modern words have been borrowed from Welsh - e.g. Cymdaithas meaning "society, association" in English is Kowethas in Cornish meaning "fellowship" and so sometimes Cornish does sound and is understandable to Welsh speakers; and sometimes it does sound very different. For Breton - I haven't looked into it - but my French teacher - who was also my Welsh teacher went on holiday to Brittany and she got along quite well communicating in Welsh; although she did say that it was quite an effort and there were quite a lot of misunderstandings. --Luccent 10:35, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Is Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic close at all with Welsh, Cornish, or Breton? and between them?

More examples?

Not sure of these, could someone add them if they think I am right?

• Finnish and Estonian
• Icelandic and Faroese

The "only eastern dialects / bokmål" in Norwegian is dubious. Some Swedes or Danes should consider whether a removal of this qualification is in place.

Jørgen 21:41, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Faroese and Icelandic are not m.i. Not even by a long shot. Mulder1982 04:22, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

As a Swedish speaker who studies with two Norwegians and (previously) two Danes, I can throw a little light on this. One of the Norwegians comes from Oslo and speaks bokmål, while the other comes from Rogaland and speaks South-West dialect. The one from Oslo is easier to understand than the one from Rogaland, but I would say that the one from Rogaland is (usually) intelligable. It's easier to understand her talking face-to-face than on the phone.

Danish is intelligable to varying degrees depending on how clear the speaker is. To Swedish ears, Danish is often spoken very unclearly (regional dialects and accents don't help - one of the Danes comes from Fyn). However, it is easier to understand if the speaker is clearer: like the other Dane, who has parents who speak different dialects and so grew up speaking dialectless Danish. Nevertheless Danish is, broadly speaking, also intelligable. Tamino 18:58, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Is Faroese at all intelligible with any other scandinavian language?

Faroese and Icelandic are only mutually intelligible in the written form, although there are some humerous false friends. When spoken, they are not intelligible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.144.126.194 (talk) 19:40, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Standardization

Is there a way we can standardize the presentation of the language groups presented? In other words, some are merely listed together (e.g. Spanish and Portuguese), while others are listed with (e.g. X with Y & Z, then a separate entry for Y with X & Z)--is this done merely to fit all alphabetically by each language?--while others are presented with some details given. ~ Dpr 3 July 2005 22:33 (UTC)

Degree of intelligibility

Is there any way to present the percentage of intelligibility, such as (using imagined numbers): Urdu speakers understand 60% of Hindi while Hindi speakers understand 75% of Urdu? ~ Dpr 3 July 2005 22:33 (UTC)

That's an intriguing idea, but I don't think such figures already exist, and the "No original research" policy would prevent us from coming up with our own. Ruakh 13:03, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Forgot about the no original research policy moentarily--thanks for pointing that out!. (Nonetheless, any linguist who wanted suggestions for research could certainly pick this topic, with great fruit and interest for many!) ~ Dpr 23:02, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Artificial Languages

What about Ido and Esperanto? And/or other artificial languages? Too far-fetched? ~ Dpr 18:49, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

A language is not real unless a generation grows up speaking it. Where do native speakers grow up speaking Esperanto

Esperanto is a language, despite being designed rather than having evolved. As far as I know the same is true of Ido. To answer the question, I am a fluent speaker of Esperanto and can understand, with a bit of guess-work, written Ido. I have never heard Ido spoken. My main difficulty in reading Ido, apart from differences in orthography and "small words" (pronouns etc), was that there are many more root words due to the language's avoidance of the mal- prefix. It's worth mentioning I can also understand French, which is Ido's preferred "source language" for words it has not retained from Esperanto. Rugxulo 23:39, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Spoken interlingua is understood by Spanish,Italian and Portuguese speakers. Many interlingua speakers can to some degree understand Spanish.--Jondel 01:13, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Should we put Interlingua as a Romance language? I'll add Eo and Io as mutually intelligible.Cameron Nedland 14:07, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I hate uzing th term "Euroclone" becuz ov th negativ thots associated with it, but it seems like a lot of those languages ar understandable to each other. Same with Lojban & Loglan.Cameron Nedland 13:21, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

No more lists

I think it's time to stop writing this though it were some sort of catalogue. Make a list of mutually intelligible languages and keep this as an article about more general linguistic discussion and then move it to mutual intelligibility, which is a lot more intuitive as an article title. As it is now, I simply avoid linking here when writing language articles.

Also, just remove the "related but not intelligible languages"-list. It serves little or no purpose, since it's assumed that separate languages are in fact mutually unintelligible.

Peter ^Isotalo 16:35, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

This section has a purpose, since a) we are writing for the broadest possible audience and b) since the indicidence of mutually intelligibility does not always follow the intuitively predictable pattern--so it is useful to understand which related language are and are not mutually intelligible. --Dpr 22:41, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I feel this section is for languages that are supposed to be or generally assumed to be mutually intelligible but not.--Jondel 01:29, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

"Generally assumed" sounds very unverifiable to me. It's pretty unencyclopedic to write articles that list misconceptions, common or not, next to proper facts, and it's not making the article any easier to understand.

Peter ^Isotalo 21:03, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Romanian ~ Aromanian

Romanian and Aromanian share their grammar, morphology and basic words. The only notable difference is the source of their rather recent borrowings: Aromanian used Greek words, while Romanian used Slavic and French words. bogdan | ^Talk 13:45, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm, my longtime girlfriend is Aromanian, but it has been a very long time since she spoke this language with her family. She actually thought she was Romanian. In the age of records (remember those), I bought her many Romanian records, she did not understand almost any of it. Later, when the internet came about, I learned how Aromanian differs from Romanian. I found a radio show that is produced in Aromanian. She understood a lot of that without trouble. I also now have a Romanian friend who lives in Romania that says she cannot understand Aromanian at all. I am unsure about this, as I recently met a U.S. doctor from Romania, who told me she often met Aromanians at Black Sea resorts in Romanian, and she could understand them pretty well. So I am unsure about the whole thing. I have read in other places that the mutual intelligiblity is actually quite low, with the Aromanians saying they can understand certain dialects of Italian better than they can understand Romanian. But Romania does like to claim all Aromanians as there own. Aromanian, also known as Macedo-Romanian, is also an official language of Macedonia and currently taught in some schools. There are a few few schools in Romania who teach this language in the schools. So I have my doubtg as if Aromanian can be considered a dialect. Then again, I am not a Romanian or an Aromanian, but I am very fascinated by both, and I am making a serious effort to study Romanian now. Thanks. [--68.107.12.248. IP added by Dpr]

Erm... I am Romanian and have absolutely no problem whatsoever in understanding Aromanian. And this is one of the few cases when the spoken language is more understandable than the written language. Let's take an example: Aromanian/Romanian:

Gãrtsia icã Elladhã (gãr: Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, Elliniki Dhimokratia) easte un stat tu Not-Datlu ali Europa membru ali Unia Europeanã.

Grecia sau Ellada (gr.: Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, Elliniki Dhimokratia) este un stat in Sud-Estul Europei membru in Uniunea Europeana.

Cham

Is Cham really mutually intelligible with Malay? (Bahasa?) See the claim at the article. --Dpr 08:11, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Is Persian(Farsi) intelligible with Afghan Persian (Dari)? Is Turkish Intelligible with Azerbaijani and Turkmen and Uzbek? And between them?

Balti and Tibetan?

Does the Balti language have any mutual intelligibility with Tibetan? Thanks --Dpr 05:26, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Slovene and West Slavic languages

As a native of speaker of the Polish language, I must say that Slovene is no more intelligible than, say, Croatian. What is more, those Serbo-Croatian ones (Croatian, Serb, Bosnian) are easier to understand than Slovene.
Polish is not of the Czech-Slovak group, either. With Kashubian it makes up the Lechitic group. All four languages (and some minor) make up the west branch of Slavic.

Does anyone know why Slovenian is so different from all other slavic languages? All other slavic languages have similarities with other nearby slavic languages, yet slovenian, by reading all the discussions here, no one seems to be able to understand it at all. Maybe a Croat or Serb can comment as they are likely the closest to the Slovenian language and have had the most exposure to it.

Slovenian is not all that different, I have no major problems understanding it with my Croatian. 24.201.24.178 05:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe Slovenian retains more "archaic" (south-)Slavic forms and words than most other Slavic languages. (This may help explain why, from what I've heard, Slovenes tend to understand other Slavic languages better than vice-versa.) As for mutual intelligibility with the language formerly known as Serbo-Croatian, it's certainly closest to the "kajkavian" dialect spoken in the region around Zagreb.

French, Walloon, Romansh, and Occitan

I can't say anything about Wallon and Occitan, but I speak perfectly French an Romansh... and I can witness that speakers of French are not able at all to understand spoken Romansh and vice versa. In their written form, I think it would be easier for Romansh to understand some french than the opposite - but I'd not call it "mutually intelligible" neither.

The mutual intelligibility between Italian and Romansh is not substantially higher, perhaps except between lombardic-italian dialects and the Romansh dialect of Engadine valley (which share some vocabulary and phonetics). But if it goes to familiar discussions, even these two groups are definitely not able to understand each other.

I agree with the contributor above. I will add, if you consider monolingual French speakers and monolingual Walloon speakers to be able to understand each others, which I think is inacurate, then this article should state All oïl languages with one another ; French, Picard, Walloon, Poitevin... since Walloon is probably more distant from French than other oïl languages. If you consider the two, Walloon and French, mutually intelligible, then any oïl languages are in that point of view, which I disagree with. I speak French, am learning Walloon for a few years and I still have trouble understanding written Walloon without constant use of a dictionary. So I flag the statement for a source. 67.70.25.64 (talk) 17:37, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Make it an article, not a list

I believe this article belongs under the title mutual intelligibility, not the current title, which reads more or less like a list.

Peter ^Isotalo 11:19, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Latvian and Lithuanian

Latvian and Lithuanian Being a native speaker of Latvian I can agree that Latvian and Lithuanian are not mutually intelligible, however, there exists an opinion that Latvians can understand Lithuanian better than the other way round. I believe it is due to the fact that we share common vocabulary (and not that much grammar as mentioned in the article!!!),but Latvian has undergone more changes, therefore Lithuanian to a Latvian sounds like an "old", perhaps "bookish" Latvian. In terms of phonetics east Latvian dialect Latgallian is closer to Lithuanian that standard Latvian.Koala 1 08:51, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Arabic

Should be something on Arabic (large differences between various vernacular dialects, and between vernacular Arabic vs. "Classical" or "standard" Arabic). AnonMoos 23:44, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I would like some clarification from native Arabic speakers. I have read that Morroccan Arabic differs from the Arabic spoken in say Iraq or Lebanon to the point where it is almost unintelligible. However, an Egyptian friend and I went to a morrocan household and he was able to converse in Arabic with the whole family and other morroccan guests just fine. He did tell me it took him a little bit to get used to the way they pronounced things (he had never met people from Morrocco before) but that the difference is not to the point where a conversation cannot hold up. Any comments?

--The situation is kinda hard to explain. Dialects can be totally unintelligbible if speakers take liberty and speak freely (Egyptian is an exception since it's understood under all circumstances). If spoken at a moderate pace, and if loanwords are avoided, Eastern dialects are mutually intelligible, Western dialects are pretty much the same, and Egyptian is universally understood. What happened with your Egyptian friend is that the Morrocan family probably spoke a standardized form of the language, what he had difficulty with is the accent not the dialect. In short, I think saying Arabic dialects are unintelligible on the level of Chinese dialects is an exaggeration, they are at least as similar as Portuguese and Spanish.--Karkaron 04:30, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree that arabic dialects are not mutually intelligible!!

If so, you have to explain me how I spent the last weekend with a tunisan, an algerian and a syrian friend and how we were communucating, each in his own dialect. The definition of mutually intelligible, as said in this page 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". I can assure you that, if written, I can understand any arabic dialect. The big difference between dialects is the procnonciation not the dialect it self (grammar, vocabulary). Hedi0058 (talk) 22:47, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Question, so you were with someone from Algeria, Tunisia, and Syria. And where are you from? Out of all of them, which one has trickier to understand and why? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.152.143.60 (talk) 18:22, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm from Tunisia. The syrian was obviously the most difficult (doesn't mean difficult) to understand but we where communicating very fluently. Another remark is that I'm not really used to shami(syrian) dialect so the fact that I could understand syrians have nothing to do with the ton of syrian movies that I could have seen in the past Hedi0058 (talk) 17:27, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I am going to take the question another way. Lets say someone from Algeria met someone from lets say Lebanon. Are they able to communicate, engage in a conversation? How much of an effort would it be, do they have to modify their speech alot to undestand eachother? Can most arabic speakers do that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.177.152.74 (talk) 18:46, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction - Estonian and Finnish

Firstly, under Selected list of mutually intelligible languages it states:

Finnish, Estonian, Meänkieli and Karelian. Speakers of Estonian generally understand Finnish far better than Finns understand Estonian.

Then, farther down the page, we have under Selected list of related languages not mutually intelligible

Finnish and Estonian, have almost no mutual intelligibility, although Estonian speakers can understand some Finnish with difficulty.

Which is it? Peter1968 12:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Peter, the main reason Estonians can understand some Finnish is not due to mutual intelligibility; radio and television stations out of southern Finland can be received in parts of Estonia and these constituted Estonia's "window to the west" as it were during the communist era. Also, since the break-up of the Soviet Union, Estonia has received a large influx of Finnish tourists, trade, etc. Thedukeofno 21:29, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I wasn't questioning the intelligibility, I was questioning the contradiction in the article. Peter1968 13:00, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

• Since the Estonian entry, listed in Finno-Ugric sub-topic is not mutually intelligible with the rest of the list, it is superfluous unless some verifiable source can show that it belongs in the list. I am strking it from the list and removing the thereby unnecessary comment that follows it. Ste4k 20:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

• • • Finnish and Estonian, have almost no mutual intelligibility, although Estonian speakers can understand some Finnish with difficulty. - Must have been written by someone who speaks neither language. In fact, these two share a noteworthy degree of mutual intelligibility, e.g I've never learnt Finnish but am able to watch Finnish TV broadcasts. Nevertheless, these 2 languages differe greatly, compared to Russian-Belarus language distinction. Constanz - Talk 06:55, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Is there any intelligibility between Hungarian and Finnish or Estonian? They are related, but is Hungarian any closer to any of the two?

The relationsip between Hungarian and Finnish (and Estonian) can be compared to the relationship between English and Russian. They are related, but not very close. A Finn understands spoken Hungarian as well as an Englishman understands spoken Russian. 24.201.24.178 05:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Point made, however, in the example you give, English and Russian it makes sense as they are grouped completly separate within the European language family, English a Germanic language, Russian a Slavic one. Hungarian en Finnish(and Estonian) are classified under the same sub family, finno-ugric.

The Uralic family is not a member of the Indo-European family, like Germanic and Slavic. The two major families are not related. The split of Proto-Finno-Ugric is dated to 4000-3500 BC, while Proto-Indo-European split completely in 3000-2500 BC, so based on time, all Indo-European languages are actually more closely related to each other than Finnish and Hungarian are to each other. Russians should understand English better than Finns should understand Hungarian! --Vuo (talk) 11:01, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Mutual and Lexical intelligibility

This article is kind of disappointing. I wish there was a way to measure Mutual intelligibility the way you measure lexical similarity - like, Spanish and Italian are 60% mutual intellegible, something like that.

_________________________________________________________________________________

I would say that roughly 10 % of the most often used words in Portuguese (or maybe a little bit more than that) do not have commonly-used modern Spanish cognates and are accordingly difficult for a Spanish speaker to understand. I'm thinking of words like e.g. mágoa, teima, saudade, meigo, doido, doente, loja, longe, perto, cedo, lembrar, rua, janela, fechar, cheirar, jantar, enjôo, ciúmes, estrada, orçamento, esquecer, etc..., most of which BTW are shared with Galician. Apart from those "exotic" words (which also include many common names for clothing and food), most of the remaining lexical differences between Portuguese and Spanish are the product of different patterns of evolution of the two languages in the transition from Latin to Romance, as well explained in the Differences between Spanish and Portuguese article. Nevertheless, whenever a given Latin-root word evolved differently in Portuguese and Spanish, there is usually an alternative or associated "learned" word that restores the original Latin root and is normally identical in Portuguese and Spanish (albeit pronounced differently). For example,

• lua (moon), but lunar (adj).
• cheio (full), but pleno.
• céu (sky), but celeste (adj).
• dor (pain), but doloroso (adj).
• chuva (rain), but pluvial (adj).
• chão (ground), but plano (adj).

Based on the discussion above, I would say that the lexical similarity between Spanish and Portuguese is probably close to 90 %, which helps to explain why speakers of one language can easily read the other with no difficulty, even despite very different spelling rules. Nevertheless, mutual intelligibility in the spoken language is much lower than that, mostly because the phonology of Portuguese is sharply different from that of Spanish and usually considered one of the most complex among European languages (European Portuguese for example is known for having up to 14 different vowels compared to only 5 vowels in standard Spanish, and is famous for its complex patterns of stressed vowel alternation and unstressed vowel reduction). There are also a few differences in Spanish and Portuguese grammar (syntax and morphology) that affect mutual intelligibility, albeit not as much as differences in phonology . For example, the use in Portuguese of the personal infinitive and the future subjunctive as well as the synthetic pluperfect, the replacement in Portuguese of haver with ter as auxiliary verb, different verb conjugation patterns (especially in the case of irregular verbs), and the use in standard Portuguese of the preterite in situations where Spanish speakers would typically use the perfect instead (that particular feature of Portuguese also occurs though in certain Spanish dialects, like Rioplatense Spanish). Mbruno 14:19, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Two comments: I disagree that 'Rioplatense' spanish is somehow closer to portuguese as I can verify that an Argentine speaker cannot understand Portuguese any better then say, someone from Mexico. In addition, again the use of European Portuguese, as opposed to what? Brazilian Portuguese? It is the same language with no greater difference then say, Spanish from Spain and that of Chile for example. If we are so keen to use the distinction, then please also refer to Brazilian Portuguese and its similarities/differences with other forms of Spanish. This over emphasis of what are miniscule distictions are surely not needed.-June 24-

Two comments: first, I didn't say Rioplatense Spanish was "closer to Portuguese" than any variety of Spanish. I just said that Rioplatense Spanish uses the preterite like Portuguese in situations where standard Spanish would prefer the perfect tense. Second, my reference above to European Portuguese was justified in that particular context because Brazilian Portuguese has a somewhat less complex phonology (e.g. only 12 vowels vs. 14 in the case of EP). 200.177.6.48 16:41, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Having learned Portuguese from a Brazilian teacher and listening and speaking to someone from Portugal, the difference is minimal, thus whether there exists a lesser or greater phonology is not of any consequence.

I would hardly call the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese "minimal". Even in the written standard language, the differences in spelling, vocabulary, and usage/style are greater than those between for example British and American English. Furthermore, the grammar of spoken BP differs considerably from the European standard, especially in uneducated registers and certain regional dialects. More significant though than grammatical differences are the differences in pronunciation between BP and EP, which may be a major obstacle to mutual intelligibility. In fact, it surprises me greatly that, having learned Portuguese from a Brazilian teacher, you have no trouble understanding EP speakers. Most native Brazilians ordinarily do not fully understand European Portuguese accents, requiring that Portuguese TV programs or movies be actually dubbed (or subtitled) when shown in Brazil.

Obviously there are differences, however, you almost make it sound like it is a completly different language and this is where you are mistaken, it is still the same language. Furthermore, it is apparent you are getting this information from textbook, when the only way to really know how large the difference is between then is to actually speak it, and while there are obvious differences, this does not hamper intelligibilty to the degree you claim that it does. By the way, perhaps you might want to venture into Portuguese wikipedia under 'língua portuguesa' and read the subtitle 'Padrões' and 'Dialetos', obviously written by NATIVE speakers of the language. And I quote "A língua portuguesa tem grande variedade de dialetos, muitos deles com uma acentuada diferença lexical em relação ao português padrão, especialmente no Brasil. Tais diferenças, entretanto, não prejudicam muito a intelegibilidade entre os locutores de diferentes dialetos.'

People I'm from Brazil. The difference between (BP) and (EP) is none. If we try to separate the two variants, we must separate as well all kinds of Brazilian dialects. The differences between BP and EP is the same as American English and British English. We can realize the accent of EP, but nothing that can make the communication not comprehensible. Concerning Spanish and Portuguese being mutually intelligible that's also true. Is really easier to a Portuguese native speaker understand Spanish, than the other way round (because some peculiarities of Portuguese phonology), but even Spanish native speakers can easily understand Portuguese. And believe me, my grandfather (mom) is Portuguese(Portugal) and my grandfather (dad) is Spanish (Spain), I lived all my life with these two languages.

However, arguably that might make you be less suitable to estimate the intelligibility, because you already are familiar with both languages. I have grown up with Swedish and Norwegian, and I am often surprised on how other Swedes misunderstand what I consider generally simple Norwegian. 惑乱 分からん 14:27, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Just to add some colour to this issue, it must be said that, in fact, Brazilians DO understand Portuguese speakers very well, unless they intentionally try to "mud the waters" (which they can achieve by using schemes like speaking faster, shortening the vowels more than usual or employing an absurd amount of words and phrases known to be regional). Brazilians can watch Portuguese TV without more obstacles than finding some unusual wording or eventual unknown words. However, most Brazilians tend to find Portuguese pronunciation "funny" and their word choices, often "weird".

Brazilians are used to most Portuguese accents because uninterrupted immigration from Portugal (until well into the seventies) provided Brazil with a significant minority of recent Portuguese ascent. Portuguese music used to be popular in the past (and has recently made a faint come-back, with Madredeus). Portuguese television (SIC and RTP) is also available from cable operators all over the country.

From my point of view, Brazilians who have trouble understanding the Portuguese must be people with very low cultural experience, as most "weird" Portuguese words are actually words that are also used in Brazil, but only in formal or literary language. It appears too that people who have travelled and met people from different places are smarter to get different accents than their own.jggouvea 00:25, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

English and Frisian

I find it about equally easy to understand Scots as Frisian, so I listed Frisian as mutually inteligible with English. I'm a native speaker of English, who grew up among Germans, Swedes, and Norwegians but without speaking any of those languages originally, and my family imigrated from Scotland and still had "Celticisms" in their speech.

This addition leaves the article self-contradictory, since English and Frisian are listed later as being uninteligible. Tom Lougheed 6 June 2006.

English and Frisian, although related are not mutually intellible.That's just a fact. Rex Germanus Tesi samanunga is edele unde scona 18:02, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, that remains to be seen, in a to be or not to be question they are not, but sufficient traces are left to make the communication between naieve speakers easier than any other communication between an English speaker and any other continental European language, traces of mutual intelligibility are still present. 10:06, 22 August 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ThW5 (talk • contribs).

Thank you for that. The real position is that English and Frisian speakers cannot understand each other except for the occasional word which overall, is not enough not convey the meaning of conversation. After 1000 year of separation, Frisian is only about as close to modern English as are Dutch, Flemish and Plattdeutsch although I accept that meanings are often clearer in written text. Today, Frisian is little more than a subsidiary dialect of Dutch, rather like the Scots dialect is to English. General conversation in each of these languages cannot be understood by the native English speaker.

It had been thought likely that Dutch might have been understood by speakers of Middle English. However prose recited in the Middle English of c 1340 is only partly intelligible to the speaker of modern English (although the speech of Shakespeare and the King James Bible can be understood with ease). Old English and Middle English sounded very similar and in fact differed mainly in orthography. By comparison the linguistic changes of 1400 (great vowel shift etc) make Middle English (and by extension Dutch and Frisian) wholly alien to the speaker of modern English.

Also, few people remark on the extent to which spoken English has become debased in the last 10 years. A whole generaton of young people have grown up for whom a final 'l' sound has been replaced by 'w', while the 'th' sound is mostly absent and replaced by f or v, and a final 't' has been replaced by a glottal stop. Unfortunately the relegation of 'received' BBC English has removed a gold standard of pronunciation, while for egalitarian reasons a debased Estuary English has assumed equal status with phonologically more conservative dialects. Throughout south London, mass immigration has made modern English little more than a Creole or Pidgin and quite unlike the received pronunciation of 1950. So if you are looking for conservative English, listen to the speech of the north east of Scotland or the speech of West Virginia. Phonologically they are 400 years old.

Portuguese is Portuguese, English is English, Spanish is Spanish etc.

Why call Portuguese European Portuguese, or Brazilian Portuguese? Portuguese is Portuguese and it is the exact same language, with minor differences. The difference is no greater then Argentine Spanish v/s Cuban Spanish yet in Spanish this distiction is officially never used because Spanish is Spanish, just as Portuguese is Portuguese, and English is English.

In response to the claim above by another poster that "Portuguese is Portuguese", "English is English" etc., my personal view on the matter is as follows (please feel free to disagree):

1. As far as Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is concerned, one must distinguish between: (i) the standard language as taught in schools and used in writing; (ii) the educated colloquial language spoken by the urban middle-class (especially in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo); and (iii) the popular Brazilian vernacular spoken by the majority of the population. The standard written language is indeed very similar to European Portuguese (EP), despite a few obvious differences in spelling, grammar and vocabulary. The educated colloquial language, being a spoken variety, differs in turn from the European norm not only in vocabulary, but, more significantly, in pronunciation. It also shows greater, albeit limited divergence in grammar from the standard written language. The popular vernacular is on the other hand considerably different not only from EP, but also from standard written BP itself. Differences are widespread in all linguistic domains (lexicon, phonology, morphology, and syntax). Nevertheless, EP speakers seem to understand BP without any major problems: Brazilian soap operas for example are never subtitled when shown on Portuguese TV. The opposite is not always true though, i.e. many Brazilians struggle with European Portuguese phonology, vocabulary and grammar to the point that Portuguese TV programs and movies are often dubbed when shown in Brazil.
2. There are clear differences in pronunciation and vocabulary between Latin American and European Spanish (one can readily tell for example if a TV newscaster comes from Spain or Mexico). Nevertheless, Spanish as an international language is far more homogeneous than, let's say, Portuguese, probably because the standard language is regulated by a central authority (the Madrid-based RAE) and because the European Castilian dialect still represents the model for "proper speech" in most of Latin America. The only major exception I can think of is Rioplatense Spanish, which seems to deviate more significantly from international Spanish.
3. British and American English (respectively BrE and AmE) differ considerably in pronunciation and vocabulary (more so than European and Latin American Spanish and in a scale comparable to the differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese). The two varieties of English also differ to a lesser extent in spelling and grammar, but differences in that respect are not as broad as in the case of European and Brazilian Portuguese. Certain dialects/sociolects of American English (like African-American vernacular English or even some uneducated varieties of Southern American English) show however greater deviation from the standard language, sometimes in a scale compare to the divergence between standard Portuguese and the popular Brazilian vernacular. Brazil and the U.S. are nonetheless similar in the sense that, in both countries, the corresponding European standards (respectively of Portuguese and English) are not seen as models to be emulated in the same way European Spanish is seen in most of Latin America (with the possible exception of Argentina).
4. Spoken Québécois French and, even more so, Acadian French are quite distinct from standard Parisian French (not so much in grammar, but mostly in lexicon and phonology) to the point that Parisian speakers may find them unintelligible. However, unlike Brazilian Portuguese and American English, Canadian French lacks a written standard of its own and the (relatively small) community of 7 million or so Canadian francophones (compared to over 60 million native speakers of French in Europe) has a neglible influence on "international French" as taught as a second language in non-francophone countries. It is also worth noticing that news anchors on Radio Canada often modify their Québec accent to sound like international French. As a result, Québec newscasts are never subtitled on international French-language television (like TV5), whereas Québec sitcoms and movies that retain the original Canadian accent often are.
5. Other European languages like German or Netherlandic seem to show a high degree of dialectalization, with often mutually unintelligible dialects. The written standard language, both for German and Netherlandic, is nonetheless very well-defined and is used as a common vehicle for communication among speakers of different dialects. In the Netherlandic-speaking world in particular, the old Dutch versus Flemish controversy is now pratically non-existent as far as the written standard language is concerned. On the other hand, South African Dutch a.k.a. Afrikaans is now considered a separate language even though the English Wikipedia makes the (doubtful) claim that: "Within the Dutch-speaking zones of the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname, there is greater divergence among the dialects than there is between standard Dutch and standard Afrikaans". As far as German is concerned, local dialect use in Germany and Austria properly seems to be dying out; in Switzerland however, a state of diglossia exists between spoken Swiss German (viewed by most linguists as a separate language) and the written standard German.
6. The considerable linguistic divergence among native speakers of several international languages generally goes unnoticed by foreign (i.e. non-native) learners of those languages, mostly because what they learn from L2 instruction books is normally the neutral, "international" standard, which, as we've seen above, is well-defined in the cases for example of French, Spanish and German. The same is not true though as far as English and Portuguese are concerned. The fact that two different written standards co-exist on both sides of the Atlantic forces foreign learners of English or Portuguese to choose one of the two varieties (American or European) before they start learning the language. In fact, weird though it may sound, there are often separate textbooks for L2 learners of American and British English, or Brazilian and European Portuguese. 201.52.32.9 13:41, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

So basically what you're saying is that the case of Portuguese is not that different from that of English, or Spanish, or Dutch... FilipeS 16:28, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

To a certain degree, yes. However, I was also trying to make the point that attitudes towards language diversity differ considerably among speakers of different major international languages. Specifically, as I see it, in the French and Spanish-speaking worlds there is considerable variation from the metropolitan standard in the spoken language, but, in the written language, be it in French Canada or in Hispanic America, the prevailing attitude seems to be one of "submission" to the dominant European norm as defined by organizations such as the Royal Spanish Academy or the French Academy. In the case of Canada, that may be easily explained as a result of "linguistic insecurity", i.e. the minority Francophone population in North America faces the constant threat of assimilation by the much larger Anglophone majority in the continent and, accordingly, sees compliance with standard international French as a way of making its culture less vulnerable to anglicization. On the other hand, in the case of Hispanic America, the reasons for the apparently subservient position to the RAE are nonetheless unclear to me (and I prefer to let American "Hispanophones" on this group explain it). In any case, prevailing attitudes in French Canada and Hispanic America contrast with those in Brazil and in the US where, in addition to considerable linguistic divergence in the colloquial spoken language, separate written standards (respectively of Brazilian Portuguese and American English) have been also developed, including sometimes different standard spelling and grammar rules. As both BP and AmEng continue to evolve somewhat independently of EP and BrEng, the prevailing attitude seems to be one of ultimately ensuring unity between the American and European standards (so that the former does not diverge too much from the latter), while refusing at the same time to accept the European norm as a model to be emulated. Finally, there is a third minoritary position which is the one taken by South African Afrikaners in the late 19th century and early 20th century, namely to create a separate written standard language based on the popular spoken vernacular (in their case, Afrikaans) deliberately emphasizing divergence from the source language (in that case, Dutch). The Afrikaner position contrasts for example with the dominant Brazilian point of view in the sense that not only did they seek to affirm the distinctiveness of their language with respect to European Dutch, but also they went further to the point of rejecting Dutch altogether as their mother tongue in favor of the 'new' standard language, Afrikaans. 200.177.24.117 02:03, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Just to point out, EP is dubbed when broadcasted in Brazil, because brazilians hate EP accent, and Portuguese has a central authority to regulate the language it´s called CPLP.

I have NEVER seen any Portuguese speaker dubbed on Brazilian TV, though some Portuguese actors who acted in Brazilian telenovelas struggled to speak more clearly (and, by the way, they were saying lines written by Brazilians). I have never seen a Portuguese feature film, so I can not tell anything about that. However, I DO say that Brazilians don't hate Portuguese accent, they just struggle a bit to understand it. And no, the CPLP has no power to regulate Portuguese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jggouvea (talk • contribs) 02:05, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Why do you only mark American English' varieties as hard to understand? Many British dialects (such as the more cockney-like ones) are quite hard to understand, at least for foreign learners of either General American or Received Pronunciation. 惑乱 分からん 01:47, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the CPLP is comparable to the French or Spanish language Academies. FilipeS 20:16, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

3 dravidian languages

I don't think the 3 dravidian languages listed are really mutually intelligible. As a malayalam speaker, I can understand some spoken tamil but no Kannada. However, as Tamil and Malayalam generally differ systematically - eg, if the tamil word ends in -ai, the malayalam cognate will generally end in -a -, it is possible to work out quite a lot. Malayalam differs significantly from Tamil in grammar in that it has introduced a copulative verb that never existed in its ancestor, classical Tamil (and does not exist in modern Tamil). --Grammatical error 17:55, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I am a malayalam speaker too, I would not say malayalam and tamil are mutually intelligible. I can say I understand about 10 to 20 % of spoken tamil, and its never enough to sustain a conversation. Malayalam and Kannada are not mutually intelligible.

I agree with the above comments. It's not possible for a Kannada speaker or a Tamil speaker to understand Malayalam. Only the numerals and some words might sound familiar. Kannada and Tamil are further apart. With regard to the scripts; only Kannada and Telugu scripts look similar. Tamil script is entirely different from other Dravidian(or Indic) scripts. Tamil has very few alphabets when compared to the rest. This paragraph needs to be changed.

Title conflict

What was wrong with moving the article to Mutual intelligibility? Such an abstract name is usually preferred as an encyclopedic title. -- Dissident (Talk) 16:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Portuguese and Spanish, mutually intelligible only in written form?

My experience with spoken Spanish has been dubious: sometimes I can grasp only a few words, sometimes I can understand it as easily as I understand Portuguese (my native language). However, the latter kind of experience outnumbers by far the former. It depends on the speaker's accent. I too disagree with the statement that hispanophones have a more difficult time reading Portuguese, than lusophones reading Spanish. As far as I can tell, hispanophones indeed have difficulty understanding European Portuguese speakers talking. But I have heard a lot of them saying they have no difficulty reading Portuguese, and one of them even said, possibly hyperbolically, he reads a Portuguese-written web news and sometimes forgets it is not Spanish-written.Guinsberg 01:01, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that it all depends of the speaker. As a Spanish speaker I can understand both EP and BP to about the same degree, meaning mostly mutually intelligible in the spoken form. Reading both languages is easy, almost identical once a few simple rules and differences are identified. This leads me to a couple of comments, that I, as s Spanish speaker can understand BP and EP to about the same degree, yet some here go to great lenghts to try and make it sound like EP and BP are almost 2 separate languages, totally untrue. Its just a matter of accent and clarity when one speaks in both Spanish and Portuguese. If the accent is modified to improve clarity, and slow down when speaking, and avoid using slang (very important when the other person is from another country), understanding becomes almost total in all forms of Spanish and Portuguese and between them.

I have heard from several Spanish speakers that Portuguese is easy to read for them, but difficult to understand when spoken. FilipeS 20:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Reading Portuguese as a Spanish speaker is easy. Not so much the spoken form, but it is still possible to understand it if one really tries or really needs to out of neccesity, but one does have to pay close attention. Again, slower speed, purposely improve clarity, and avoid slang is the key to better undestanding.

Generally speaking, it's fairly easy for an educated Portuguese speaker to understand Spanish as the two languages are almost identical (89 % lexical overlap). Having said that, as a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker, I personally find the European Spanish accent more difficult to understand than, let's say, Mexican or Rioplatense (Argentinean) Spanish. I suppose one of the problems we have with accents from central and northern Spain is the frequent occurrence of the voiceless fricative [ɵ], a consonant that does not exist in Portuguese. The use (in all Spanish varieties ?) of voiced approximants like [β] also complicates mutual intelligibility. Mbruno 17:15, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Spanish and portuguese are very close languages, even though i learn spanish, i have a friend who speak portuguese and when she speak portuguese i can understand 80-90% of what she is saying! so i wouldn't say only in wirtten form, maybe the only difficulty is the accent that portuguese has that is the trouble for most spanish speakersAustralian Jezza 07:23, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I would also include Spanish and Portuguese in the "written and spoken forms" mutual intelligibility. As one said, it's just about the accent of the person who is speaking. Difficulties due to accent do Britain and other European countries there are dialects which are difficult to understand even for other native speaker. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.13.221.191 (talk) 16:48, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

They're different languages, and shouldn't be listed as mutually intelligible unless someone can cite a reliable source supporting that. Personal impressions are not permissible. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:30, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was move. Mutual intelligibility is ambiguous, but not with another article. Also, the majority support the move and it is what linguists call it. -- Kjkolb 09:14, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Mutually intelligible languages → Mutual intelligibility – It's more encyclopedic to use the abstract term while the current title suggests a list. Dissident (Talk) 21:46, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Survey

Add "* Support" or "* Oppose" followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Support - although i don't feel that strongly about it. Please make sure that this survey stays here long enough to get a clear result - ie at least a couple of weeks. --Merbabu 03:18, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
• Support per nom.--Húsönd 00:51, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose as the request is formulated now - but see further comments infra.JoergenB 18:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
• Support; "mutual intelligibility" is the usual term in linguistics. Angr 19:29, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments.

As I understand it, a title is better than another, if, all else being equal, the first one clarifies the subject better. "Mutual intelligible languages" obviously is about languages, but "Mutual intelligibility" could refer to a lot of other things as well. (Do teen-agers and their parents really understand each others, in modern western society? Do men and women? Do dogs and wild wolves mutually understand their social relations sign language - e.g., dominance-submission signals?) The proposed new title does have a better main word, if we view the introductory discussion as the main 'encyclopedian' part of the article (which I tend to do); but this does not compensate the strong increase of ambiguity in that title.

On the other hand, I would support a change to a title like Mutual language intelligibility, which I think would retain the lower ambiguity.JoergenB 18:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem is, no one ever speaks of "mutual language intelligibility", they speak of "mutual intelligibility". The opening sentence makes clear what's being talked about. Angr 19:29, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Dutch & English

I've heard that Dutch speakers can understand English speakers much easier than the other way around, I'll ask Ijzeran.Cameron Nedland 13:29, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Dutch people have often studied much English and are thus quite good ESL speakers. Otherwise, the languages would be too different to retain much intelligibility. 惑乱 分からん 23:33, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

It's kind of too bad everyone is being forced to learn English. Sigh...Cameron Nedland 13:15, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

1. Do you mean User:IJzeren Jan?

2. Possibly, but it's useful to know it. 惑乱 分からん 16:27, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

1. Yep, that's him.

2. I know, but everyone criticizes for wanting for learning language x,y,z whatever.Cameron Nedland 19:51, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

1. OK.

2. What do you mean, exactly? I don't understand you. 惑乱 分からん 20:49, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

O, I will be talking to someone about what they would like to be able to do, and I would say something like "I'd like to be able to speak Swedish" and then they say "That's dumb, everyone knows English already". That's about it.Cameron Nedland 01:28, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Hindi and Urdu

These two languages appear to be m.i. in "spoken form and written form" in this page, but later appear again as "only in spoken form". There's such a contradiction over here!! And I suggest to remove them from "Spoken and written", because Hindi is written in Devanagari, whereas Urdu is written in Arabic script. --Edmundkh 22:31, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

There seems to some confusion regarding Urdu and Hindi, yes it is true that in everyday speak the speakers can understand each other, OTH, literay and formal Urdu is highly persianzed, and in fact in Pakistan is the approved style. That can be completely unintellugable to Hindi speakers. Take Pakistans National Anthem for instance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.65.163.248 (talk) 20:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Czechoslovakian!?

Huh? Is there such a language called "Czechoslovakian"!? Actually I know nothing about Czech nor Slovakian, but I've found that now, only Czechs and Slovaks who were born BEFORE 1985 (or adult Czechs and Slovaks) can understand each other, as there language were exposed to each other when they were in one same country. After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, the Czechs and Slovaks have stopped sharing their languages with each other. So, it seems that Czech and Slovakian aren't totally m.i. --Edmundkh 22:44, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

They are mutually intelligible, just not identical. -Iopq 14:43, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

They are not fully mutually intelligible in the strict sense, young Czechs understand Slovak only with great difficulties, not to mention that they are unable to use Slovak actively. For Slovaks, however, Czech is "fully intelligible" in a sense, because they have Czech TV, Czech books etc. in Slovakia, and are exposed to the language every day. But that is not mutual intelligibility in the strict sense, but a learned foreign (very similar) language. The same applies to many Slovaks in northern Slovakia with respect to Polish, but there the exposition to Polish literature for example is much lower, given that there was no common country in the past. And at the dialect level, only western Slovak dialects are intelligible with Czech...And the "Czechoslovakian" language part is completely wrong and a mistake (there is a Czech-Slovak language group, hence the confusion). Juro 15:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I took the liberty of updating the main entry accordingly. See the indo-european language group. irvo 1:24, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Standard Greek and Cypriot Greek

The text states that "Standard Greek is generally not mutually intelligible with most Greek dialects, especially those developed in isolated communities such as Griko, Cypriot Greek and Pontic Greek." I won't touch Griko, since I'm not familiar with it or Pontic because I want to focus elsewhere . As a native speaker of Standard Greek, I have little difficulty understanding Cypriot(not accented Standard language,the dialect), to the point that I feel obliged to edit it out. XVA 05:52, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Slovenian and Serbian

What relations do these languages have? Are they m.i.? It's very interesting for me, as a Slav (I'm Ukrainian, I can understand Serbian, but I cannot understand Slovenian!). I hope, we can find here a Serbian or a Slovene.

I agree. It seems that while all other Slavic languages have a close brother nearby, no one seems to understand Slovenian, even Croatians have trouble with it (so ive been told)and they are seemingly their closest linguistic cousin. Yes, can a Slovene, Croat or Serb please comment.

-- I believe Slovenian retains more "archaic" (south-)Slavic forms and words than most other Slavic languages. (This may help explain why, from what I've heard, Slovenes tend to understand other Slavic languages better than vice-versa.) The closest that Croatian gets to it is the "kajkavian" dialect spoken in the region around Zagreb.

-- I agree that Slovenian is more "archaic" South Slavic form. As a native Serbian speaker, I can understand it very well. So I consider it very close to the degree of similarity like "kajkavian" Croatian, Macedonian and Bulgarian. It takes me about half an hour of exposure to Slovenian (spoken, written) to start unerstanding it flawlessly. Also, it is true that Slovenes tend to understand better Croatian,Bosnian,Montenegrin and Serbian (Stokavian, former Serbo-Croatian) than vice-versa. Furthermore, South Slavic languages, share lot of similarity with Western Slavic languages. I would say that Slovak, Ruthenian, Sorbian, have certain degree of closeness with Serbian (Croatian,Bosnian...). Therefore, personally, I do not agree with the statement in the main article: "Serbo-Croatian and Russian are particularly close, but they are not mutually intelligible to those who had no preliminary exposure to them." This is a biased statement. Simply, Slovak, Ukrainian,Rutenian, are closer to Serbian than Russian. Back to Slovenian, it is particularly close to Serbian with a substantial degree of m.i.

-- I would not agree. I am Croatian and I understand Russian way better than Czech, while I can't understand Polish at all. This is just me, of course, but I know many other people who find Russian to be surprisingly understandable. Slavic languages are all reasonably closely related, and the levels of m.i. criss-cross the East/West/South divisions, so it's not so easy to generalize which are more related to which. I can only say that I find Eastern languages more understandable than the Western ones, and I must point out Polish as particularly unintelligible. I must also point out one thing. It says above that Croatian is linguistically closest to Slovenian and that Serbian is somewhat different. It is maybe true for the kajkavian population of Croatia (which does not include Zagreb-kaj is used there, but the Zagreb dialect is not kajkavian), but no more than say 10% of Croatians are kajkavian. But of course all kajkavians can "understand" štokavian as well, as can all čakavians (which also constitute a small amount of speakers). So all Croatians speak Serbo-Croatian (štokavian), but not all understand Slovenian(kajkavian, and thus more conservative). Saying that Croatians understand Slovenians better than do the Serbs would be like saying that Brits comprehend Dutch better than the Americans, although Slovenian and S.-C. are more closely related than English and Dutch. Croatian and Serbian are really rediculously similar. Saying anything else means that you either don't speak the language(s), or that you've been living on Uranus for the past 150 years. So, Slovenians, especially older ones (that lived in Yugoslavia) seem to understand Croatian (Serbian) better than other way round. I have a hard time understanding spoken Slovenian, but it's easier when it is in writing. Uf... time to rest now Zhelja (talk) 00:00, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Niger-Congo

I put "Bantu" under this heading, added a few groups and also another subheading, "Mande." Much more could be added but I have an eye on the tag that this article doesn't have cited sources. Also noting a comment above about how you (or anyone cited for that matter) determines "intelligibility." In the case of some African language groups I added the common moniker to describe the interintelligible group: Nguni, Oshiwambo, Beti, Manding. There is certainly variation within a group and eventually you get down to issues of user skills - if you've had to communicate with another variety or even accent of the same language, "macrolanguage," or group, you get better at it; or if you've studied your language you probably have a better understanding to apply to communications with other dialects or closely-related languages.

Another complication relating to comments above re Englishes and Arabics (Arabic vernaculars probably vary a lot more than English varieties [not counting pidgins & creoles]), is whether what are commonly considered one language with variants (but which Ethnologue might split into separate languages) should be on this list. For instance Fula (Fulfulde, Pulaar, Pular) which is clearly one language from the point of lexical repertoire and basic structure, has variations in active lexicon, expressions, some structure, and accent. Dialects? Languages? For this article does it make sense to include Fula and its varieties in a list of mutual intelligibility? Or if it is assumed to be a language with variant forms is it a separate Wikipedia article? Not easy - for example a neighbor in Niamey, Niger who was a native Fula-speaker (Pular) from Guinea-Bissau never studied the language and was not able to converse with Fulas in Niger - I was able to communicate with both because of study and exposure to the language mainly in Mali and Guinea - so is it a language/dialect issue or a user-experience/study issue or how much of both?

Anyway the topic is highly pertinent for expanding discussion of African languages generally.--A12n 14:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Accuracy in numbers

The current version expresses mutual intelligibility in percentages with 3 significant decimals. I have serious doubts if there is a meaningful way of measuring it to such an accuracy. Should we not better state round numbers? −Woodstone 08:19, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Mutual UNintelligibility

Directs here. It seems if this should be the case there ought to be some proper discussion of the matter (conditions leading to it, etc.) Simply being the negative doesn't mean that all one might want/need to know about it can be inferred from the positive. Such an omission and assumption is understandable for say counterclockwise (and even then it's been called into question), but not for a topic as rich as this. --Belg4mit 18:32, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Encyclopedic quality

In one section FR is given as MI with IT. Further down the page it is claimed that they are not. There are too many contradictions in this page which seemingly result from random individuals placing their own opinions (as evidenced by this talk page) down as fact. Some proper citations are in order to help clean this up. --Belg4mit 18:48, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

You are absolutely right. The article has been tagged for lack of sources for a year now. Either there are no reliable sources on mutual intelligibility or the people working on this article have no way of accessing them.

If I were to decide, I would limit the article to an explanation of the term "mutual intelligibility", give one or two examples and simply delete all the rest of it.Unoffensive text or character 09:07, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Latin = EXTINCT?!

From the article:

1. Latin (nearly extinct) and Faliscan

Oh, whatever happened to the field of medicine, let alone academic Latin TAUGHT to millions of students, and its linguistic value (making it quite unlikely that it'll ever be extinct..)?

EDIT: I almost forgot to mention religious service and archeology D:. --nlitement ^[talk] 01:29, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Latin is called a dead language (in colloquial vernacular) because nobody speaks it as their native tongue, nor even in daily usage. --Belg4mit 00:42, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Contradiction: French - Italian

French is listed as being partially mutually intelligible with Italian and not mutually intelligible with Italian.

Is it or isn't it? (I don't speak either language, so I'm of no help in answering this.)Andy Christ 20:19, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

It's not. --nlitement ^[talk] 19:39, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I speak both Italian and French and I think they are mutually intelligible to some extent. --89.97.35.70 11:18, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Intelligibility depends on what is discussed and how so

It seems like a significant over-simplification to try to apply across-the-board classification of mutual intelligibility or degree thereof. One can argue that when an English-speaker discusses "technical" topics or uses "fancy" words they could be somewhat understood by Romance-language speakers (due to the Latin-derived vocabulary), whereas when one discusses "common, simple, and basic" things they might be partially comprehensible to someone speaking another Germanic language. Let me give two sentences to demonstrate this point, the first uses Latin-derived words, the second Germanic words:

English: "Decapitation of a person for homicide is morally impermissible and politically impossible." Italian: "la decapitazione di una persona per il homicide è morale impermissible e politicamente impossibile."

English: "The bread is cold, slimy, and old, namely twenty days old" German: "Das Brot ist kalt, schleimig, und alt, nämlich Zwanzig Tage alt."

-User: Nightvid

Good point, though it might have been better made if the English followed the foreign language (or were not included at all) --Belg4mit 07:45, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I can understand most of Estonian even if it's listed here as not mutually intelligible with Finnish. It may take some time to decode stuff. Mutual intelligibility probably means that you can actually speak with a person and understand them.. perhaps like Belorussian/Russian or Yiddish/German. --nlitement ^[talk] 04:56, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

This is much more impressing with Italian vs. Maltese: Maltese has imported large amounts of vocabulary from Sicilian, Italian, and English, while retaining Arabic-derived grammar and basic vocabulary. Quoting the wikipedia article about Maltese,

As a result of this, Romance language-speakers may easily be able to comprehend more complex ideas expressed in Maltese, such as "Ġeografikament, l-Ewropa hi parti tas-superkontinent ta' l-Ewrasja" (Geographically, Europe is part of the Supercontinent of Eurasia), while not understanding a single word of a simple sentence such as "Ir-raġel qiegħed fid-dar" (The man is in the house).

--80.104.234.88 (talk) 14:34, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada

Are they really MI in speech? And For writing, once Kannada was listed, but I've removed it because it looks so different to me comparing to the other two. ButI don't speak any of them, so I don't know whether Tamil and Malayalam are really MI in writing. HELP!!!! --Edmund the King of the Woods! 17:43, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I am a native speaker of Malayalam and I never found any significant mutual intelligibility between Kannada and Malayalam. Though many word roots are similar between Malayalam and Tamil; degree of MI in speech is questionable. The influence of Tamil movies has made it possible for many to understand Tamil, but that doesn't really help the argument of MI. Most of my Tamilian friends can hardly understand anything spoken in Malayalam. So I think that the degree of MI between Tamil and Malayalam is no more than that between most north Indian Languages. There is little MI to speak of in writing at least; though one who is not familiar with either of these languages might find it similar. As for me, I can't even read a word of Tamil; neither do most of the fellow Malayalees. I am editing the article a bit, please feel free to discuss it in my talk page. As for the example cited between Telugu and Malayalam, that does not help the argument of MI; this sort of similarities are there within all language families. Again, this part of the article is giving too many unwanted details. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rklystron (talk • contribs) 11:36, 25 January 2008 (UTC) --Rklystron 25 Jan 2008. —Preceding comment was added at 11:28, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Barriers to mutual intelligibility

I think the article ought to discuss what factors tend to hinder m.i. between closely related languages (too many non-cognates, word order, pronounciation, etc.) Sometimes it can depend on one's "meta-linguistic awareness", for instance recognizing German Flüchtling "refugee" as "flight-ling" or langsam "slow" as "long-some".

-User: Nightvid

MUTUAL Intelligibility

I've seen many people say that they can understand a different language on the discussion page and then list the languages as mutually intelligible. That is just one-sided intelligibility. Intelligibility differs from person to person and also depends on what is being said. For instance, if you're Russian you may understand a Polish guy completely, but your Russian friend may have no idea what's going on. And if the Polish guy says something else, you might not understand him at all. It is very hard to study intelligibility because there is so much variation. So just because you understand (or don't understand) something in a related language it does not mean that is the case for all speakers (or even most speakers) and it definitely does not guarantee it goes the other way around. Mutual intelligibility is not one guy being able to understand something in another language. This is an example of mutual intelligibility:

A Polish guy is in the Czech Republic and asks a Czech guy for directions (in Polish). The Czech understands what he is saying and tells him where to go (in Czech). The Polish guy understands and finds where he needs to go.

If the Polish guy didn't understand then it is not mutual intelligibility. And this has to happen for a lot of people, not just those two guys. Alex 202.10.89.28 04:54, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Agree with this. I noticed there were a lot of political, not linguistic statements, especially regarding Russian. Some people seem to want to distance themselves from Russians. What I am amazed of is that people still declare that Ukrainian is not mutually intelligible with Russian, as if the majority of Russians and Ukrainians can't communicate (if they wanted), including people with little exposure to the other language and even using extreme examples (e.g. Western Ukrainian with an Eastern Russian). Polish, like most Slavic languages is also understandable for Ukrainians but I don't think it's the same level than Ukrainian to Russian, especially the Polish accent and some grammar point may confuse a Ukrainian. BTW, I like both Polish and Ukrainian and I am Russian. --Atitarev (talk) 12:59, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Tagalog and Malay... Not Intelligible..

I'm a Filipino. My first language is Filipino(Tagalog), My second, English. My Third, Ilokano. Whenever I hear someone speak Malay. I could understand them at least. Pagbasang Tagalog is a Malay language which borrowed heavily from Spanish. Bahasa Melayu also from English and Bahasa Indonesia from Dutch. It's like as if Spanish, English and Dutch speaking together, only English and Dutch can understand themselves. (Dutch and English were germanic while Spanish were Romance thats why Tagalog is biased as the hardest to understand inside the Malay world). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.213.239.241 (talk) 11:54, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Philippine Languages and Malayic Languages are far apart that is why they can't understand each other--115.147.30.111 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 03:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC).

Mutual Intelligibity criteria (please comment)

Look, I believe that in the first place, we must define the criteria of what is to be mutual intelligible, then expose it in the head of the article!!! In my opinion, and I would like to read other opinions, when I think about mutual intelligibility, I´m thinking that I speak one language, then I meet someone from other country that does not speak the same language as I do, we talk to each other without any kind of previous study. I'm Portuguese native speaker, then Spanish language is undoubtly mutual intelligible, because never studying it before, "we", Portuguese native speakers, are able to understande what they are saying, in a very deep manner, being able to pick up the details of a conversation. But I really believe that MI, depends on other things, I once chatted with an American, and acording to him, he wasn't able to understand British English, and reported to me that, he had watched a film from Glasgow, that was subtitled when broadcasted in the USA. I believe in a strict sense that American English and British English is the same language. Although many Arabs state that the different varieties of Arabic are not different enough to hinder the communication. I also heard the oposite opinion of that too, and carried out with a strong argument, that was: "-If the varieties of Arabic were not different, it would not be necessary to create a standardized manner to write in Arabic" So MI depends, on many things and I'd like your opinion in this sense to estabilish a criteria. Thank you all RGonzalez —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.25.172.134 (talk) 02:23, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

French ~ Italian

Although French has a very little degree of oral mutual intelligibility with Spanish and Portuguese, it has nevertheless a slightly greater degree of intelligiblity with Italian, since it is genetically closer to it. And between written French and Italian there is an even greater degree of MI. Plus, Spanish is the language an Italian speaker can understand the most in oral form, but French has definitely a higher degree of intelligiblity in written form. Do people agree with mee? I think those references should stay, while they are consistently removed. --89.97.35.70 (talk) 23:57, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Mainly I agree, though it is not true that French and Italian are closer related. Genetically French belongs to the West Romance languages, Gallo-Iberian group, Gallo-Rhatian subgroup, while Italian is an Italo-Dalmatic language, these languages (Italian, Dalmatian, Napolitan, Sicilian, etc.) are a transition between Eastern and Western Romance languages. French is more closely related with Occitan, Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese than with Italian, though French and Italian may share a higher number of common vocabulary than French and Ibero-Romance languages. Of course, Italian and Spanish are the most mutually intelligibly languages, as they share a very similar phonology sistem (not counting with proper Spanish innovative features, like [sh] > [h] and [ts] > [th] changes: Italian LASCIARE [la'share] > Spanish (LEJAR >) DEJAR [de'har], or Italian CIELO (['tsielo] >) ['chelo] > Spanish CIELO ['thielo] (from latin LAXARE and CAELUM). --Mex^talk 10:07, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Scandanavian and Dutch??

Under "written form only" the page states "Those proficient in Swedish, Norwegian or Danish can understand at least simpler things in written Dutch". How can this be? Dutch is West Germanic and the Scandinavian languages are North Germanic, so I doubt they are m.i. to any significant degree. They are further apart than Dutch and English (both West Germanic)!

-User: Nightvid (unregistered)

I'm not sure... I'm a native Dutch (Flemish) speaker, and when I read wikipedia articles in Norwegian, Swedish (Danish is slightly harder, I think) I can understand most of it. (only written, spoken I don't understand a word of it) The problem is that I already speak English, however I think that Dutch and the Scandinavian languages are closer related than Dutch and English as far as vocabulary is concerned. Of course that's just my perception, I have no proof for this. English may be a West-Germanic language like Dutch, but it had a huge French influence, while both Dutch and Scandinavian use a lot more Germanic words.--Lamadude (talk) 15:10, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Try http://www.lowlands-l.net/anniversary/svenska.php .

-User: Nightvid (unregistered)

Undone articles

I think that there are many red colored articles.It would be good to start articles on them by native speakers of the languages that are 'red'. LeUrsidae96 (talk) 09:46, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Hindi and Nepali,Hindi and Bengali

I have noticed Hindi and Nepali to be mutually intelligible to each other.I also wonder if HIndi and Bengali are mutually intelligible to each other. LeUrsidae96 (talk) 09:51, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

They are not mutually intelligible, except for a few words (they are, after all, both Indo-Aryan). Hindi and Nepali are somewhat more similar to each other than Hindi and Bengali are similar to each other (and they use the same writing system). The heart of the Hindi-speaking region does not border any Bengali-speaking region, so on the dialect continuum, they are too distant from each other. --71.111.194.50 (talk) 02:27, 26 September 2009 (UTC)