Talk:Mutual intelligibility/Archive 2

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Mandarin and Cantonese

What is "Written Mandarin and written Cantonese" doing here? Readers of Mandarin cannot generally read written Cantonese. If Cantonese speakers can read "written Mandarin", it is only because they had to learn to read and write it—in other words, because they know it. (Generally they control it better than written Cantonese.)

Shorne 05:01, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

But well, as a mando speaker, i can understand written cantonese, hakka and taiwanese, but not wu --minus273`unloggedin 220.166.10.130 08:07, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Written form of ALL Chinese languages is standardized isn't it? Except for the difference between Simplified and Traditional characters; one who learns to write Traditional characters would have no difficulties understanding Simplified characters, but not vice versa.

No, not really standardised. In Hong Kong, people use Traditional Chinese to write Cantonese. You have to know both Mandarin and Cantonese,if you wanna know the difference. Let me show you the two translations of "What is Wikipedia?" Mandarin (Traditional Chinese) - 什（甚）麽是《維基百科》？ Mandarin (Simplified Chinese) - 什么是《维基百科》？ Cantonese - 乜嘢係《維基百科》？

Actually, this question can be expressed in other ways in these two languages. See the difference! I would consider Cantonese as a LANGUAGE, not a DIALECT. It's called a dialect just for political reason. The s***** Communist China government call it a dialect to make Mandarin supreme. Sorry to PRC nationals if you are offended by the previous sentence. --Edmundkh 10:55, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

"Nuh-uh" captures the general niveau of the editor that removed Spoken Chinese from the Written Only list with the note that it was lexicon only. 72.228.150.44 (talk) 18:43, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

One may presume that readers have or can acquire a general understanding of the Hanzi as a whole. The issue of the mutual intelligibility of Mandarin and Cantonese, lexically, as well as that of any spoken Chinese language based on them is the degree to which the characters carry roughly the same underlying ideograms. The parts of speech, specific grammars, etc. are to some extent obfuscations of this central fact. 72.228.150.44 (talk) 01:24, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

{{citation needed}} rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 10:29, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Supplementing above after further reading to say "the degree to which the characters are formed according to common underlying ideographic principles". It was never in question that the different spoken Chineses are mutually unintelligible. Similarly, as I understand it, written vernacular Chinese is an invention of the 20th century, prior to which there was essentially written Classical Chinese and the various spoken forms. Cantonese is primarily a spoken form and as such it expresses a/the divergence of spoken forms. This is just another way of saying that Mandarin is the spoken successor of written Classical Chinese (even though Cantonese may be closer to the latter phonologically or otherwise). When I looked at the sample Mandarin and Yue expressions I could recognize the common Mandarin expression and not the Cantonese. However I still saw the Cantonese text as being composed of similar radicals, e.g. (those I associate from MSC with) Man, 5, Mouth, etc. 72.228.150.44 (talk) 04:41, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

All of this is original research. Does anyone have a scholarly, reputable source indicating mutual intelligibility? --Killing Vector (talk) 04:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

No, you apparently don't get it. There isn't any. Not at the level at which the concept (of mutual intelligibility) is generally understood. Once you go beyond it, trivially, you are in the area of original research. The very notion of "The Chinese Language" (i.e. as a single entity), the logographic nature or lack thereof of "the Chinese Language", etc. are all highly controversial. That doesn't mean there isn't an underlying truth, which has not as yet been codified. That's why this is here and (the good reason why) I didn't persist with the issue in mainspace. Also this is wikipedia not scholarpedia. 72.228.150.44 (talk) 08:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Um, I think you're the one who doesn't get it. You have been told again and again that your musings don't make a difference here unless you can back them up with a source, and you have not done so.

Also, while I'm here I should point out that the consensus among linguists is to talk about the "Chinese languages", not "Chinese language". (Sure, there are some ultra-nationalist linguists who still insist on saying it's one language, but they're outside the consensus. All serious typological data points to them being separate, related languages, just like the Romance languages.) rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 10:56, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

If you say so. LOL: Varieties of Chinese has the single largest tagging I've seen here in 4 years. 72.228.150.44 (talk) 11:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

So the fact that someone wrote a bad, unreferenced Wikipedia article somehow means the linguistics community isn't in agreement about something? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

And with that rhetorical question, much hilarity ensued. Finally, from our perspective, the fact that most people in the affected region(s) excluding possibly Taiwan, read and write Modern Standard Chinese but speak a dynamic Yueh and when they write the latter use the same Hanzi albeit with different connotation, indicates something is occurring in the family of concepts of which mutual intelligibility is a member, even if it is not that exactly. c.f. also the Yueh and MSC wiki front pages. 72.228.150.44 (talk) 18:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

People in what you call "the affected region" are often bilingual in Standard Mandarin and whatever the local language is.

And by the way, Cantonese does not use all the same Hanzi, there are many characters that were created for Cantonese. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:52, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

And it's funny that you point to zh-wiki and zh-yue-wiki, seeing as how the existence of two separate projects for those languages is, in of itself, evidence that they're different. Rather than comparing main pages (which are featuring different articles on any given day), why not compare the Tutorial pages in Mandarin WP and Cantonese WP—most Mandarin speakers would understand little of the Cantonese page. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Just in case you're still around, here is something to check out:

Mair, Victor (1991). "What Is a Chinese "Dialect/Topolect"? Reflections on Some Key Sino-English Linguistic Terms". Sino-Platonic Papers. 29. Mandarin, Fuchow, Cantonese, Shanghai, Suchow, and the other major fangyan do not share the same written language. I have seen scattered materials written in these different Chinese fangyan, both in tetragraphs and in romanized transcription, and it is safe to say that they barely resemble each other at all. Certainly they are no closer to each other than Dutch is to English or Italian to Spanish.

rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:53, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

This too: Diglossia#Chinese. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 01:10, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Also, I mistakenly believed until recently but obviously after the above that Cantonese was a dominant Chinese in Taiwan, it isn't. 72.228.177.92 (talk) 19:08, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Nope, it certainly is not. The dominant languages there are Mandarin and Taiwanese. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Find references or cut the unsourced.

This page is full of original research; if sources aren't forthcoming it should all be removed. In particular, any time you say "I can understand this, and I speak this" and add it to the article, that's original research. The content must be backed up by scholarly sources. --Stlemur (talk) 17:42, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

If no sources are forthcoming I'm getting out the chainsaw. -Stlemur (talk) 11:19, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I have been bold and removed the list completely. In fact having embedded lists in articles is deprecated, and this list in particular was uninformative, unverifiable and unsourced. It also completely misrepresent what mutual intelligibility is. Mutual intelligibillity is a result of two things 1. the fact that any strict distinction between languages and their dialects are unexistant. 2.The fact that mutual intelligibility is only measurable as a percentage - because no two language varieties are ever completely mutually intelligible. It also misrepresent the fact that mutual intelligibillity is variable form speaker to speaker. Some danes understand swedish perfectly others don't - it depends among other things on their previous linguistic experience. In short the list was unneccessary and misleading and now its gone.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 21:05, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

It's somewhat notorious that Spanish is more comprehensible to Portuguese-speakers than Portuguese to Spanish speakers... AnonMoos (talk) 07:52, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

That doesn't cut it. Mutual intelligibillity is as with etymology - many people think that anecdotal evidence and folk belief is enough to make a statement - however in both fields myths and legends abound. In an encyclopedia we need to give reliable information actually based on scientific studies. If you find a scientific study of mutual intelligibillity between spanish and portuguese and it draws this conclusion you are more than welcome to add it. Actually we should encourage all additions of actually sourced contents.·Maunus·ƛ· 11:03, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

The list is again just accumulating OR. Nobody is making any effort to reference anything; I think the list as an entity is basically unverifiable. Thoughts on cutting it again? --Killing Vector (talk) 19:51, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I would say remove everything unreferenced (unless, of course, you yourself can find a reference for it; then you can rescue it) and add prominent hidden comments in every section telling people not to make additions without citing a source. Then, someone watching the article could revert any edits that don't make additions without sources. I think that's the only way to keep it under control. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:59, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I think maybe it is overkill to cut the whole list on the bais of "original research". Hindi and Urdu, for example, is so "mutually intelligible" that the word for the both of them, "hindustani", comes from the fact that, to the people who speak it, it is a single language divided by a politico-social problem. We shouldn't need to cite a source for making claims that ammount to the use of dictionary terms. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.66.13.161 (talk) 20:47, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I think especially for obvious cases like Hindi and Urdu it should be very easy to find a source. +An gr 20:53, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Blanked

I know this idea has been knocked around for a while, but I decided to get decisive now. I removed all the uncited examples (which was essentially everything), left some nasty hidden comments, and also left a template inviting people to re-add languages but to include a source every time. Hopefully this way we can get the article started anew, and get it done the right way this time.

For anyone who wants to start working on repopulating the list, here is what it looked like before it was deleted. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Dyirbal and Girramay

I removed these entries from the list:

Dyirbal: Girramay^[1]
Girramay: Dyirbal^[1]

^ ^a ^b Dixon, Robert M.W. The Languages of Australia. Cambridge University Press.

I haven't seen Dixon's book so I don't know what he says, but Ethnologue classifies Girramay as a dialect (see [1]); the Linguist List's search tool does too, although I think it's mostly based on Ethnologue anyway. Granted, I know Ethnologue has its issues, but I figured unless we can determine outright that Girramay is its own language then there's probably no need to add this pair; if we get too lax with listing mutually intelligible dialects then the list could get very bloated.

rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:50, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

If anything, Ethnologue usually errs on the side of considering things separate languages that other people would call dialects of the same language, so if even Ethnologue says Girramay is a dialect of Dyirbal rather than a separate language, it probably really is. +An gr 10:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Spanish and Galician

I'm not sure about listing these as mutually intelligible. There is one reference, which mentions a "high degree of mutual intelligibility", but I'm not sure if that's uncontroversial. I know a couple native speakers of Galician and will ask them next time I get a chance; in the meantime, does anyone else know much about this? I, unfortunately, am not very knowledgeable about the Hispanosphere. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:53, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I suspect it's about the same as Spanish and Portuguese. (If history had been slightly different and Galicia were part of Portugal rather than part of Spain, then Galician would almost certainly be considered a dialect of Portuguese rather than a separate language.) As it is, I bet virtually all speakers of Galician are bilingual in Spanish, so it might be difficult for them to judge mutual intelligibility - of course they can understand Spanish, because they're bilingual! +An gr 09:58, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

As a portuguese I can tell you it's rather easy for us to have basic understanding of spaniards, both written and spoken. Not so much vice-versa probably because they have less phonems and also probally tend to interact less with portuguese they we interact with them (population disproportion). Many words are similar, and those who are not tend to be similar to archaic words in the other language anyway. The grammar is virtually identical. With a few weeks study one basically becomes fluent in the other language. Rnbc (talk) 15:54, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm a native Latinamerican Spanish speaker (I've never seen Gallician before) and I just took a look to Gallician Wikipedia. It seemed like Portuguese with Spanish spelling to me and yes,I understood everything.

Gallician text: O obxectivo é a plena transmisión da sabedoría e o coñecemento sen restricións editoriais nin comerciais. O desenvolvemento da Wikipedia está aberto a toda persoa interesada en contribuír.

My Spanish translation: El objetivo es la plena transmisión de sabiduría y conocimiento sin restricciones editoriales ni comerciales. El desarrollo de Wikipedia está abierto a toda persona interesada en contribuir.--Simiyachaq (talk) 16:13, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Reorganization

In this edit I reorganized the way information was presented in the article. Before, it just listed pairs of languages, organized in alphabetical order by the [arbitrarily chosen] first language in the pair. This could present a problem because, say, if there was an entry for "Spanish and Galician", someone scanning the page looking for Galician might not ever notice it buried in the wall of text. So essentially I made the entries redundant: instead of listing pairs, I listed every language on its own line, followed by a list of languages considered mutually intelligible. The end result then, is that there is one line that's like "Galician: Spanish" (i.e., Spanish is a language mutually intelligible with Galician, according to the source) and later another line like "Spanish: Galician". This introduces some redundancy but should also make the page better-organized.

After having done that, though, I was thinking maybe we need even further reorganization. Right now there are subsections for things like "mutually intelligible in written form only", "in spoken form only", etc. The upshot is that a language might end up having entries in each section. Perhaps a better format would be to do away with sections altogether, and organize all the information in a single table. It could have one of two formats. One with different sorts of "intelligible" forms indicated in different columns:

Language	Spoken & written	Written only
Bosnian	Croatian^[1] Serbian^[2]
Hindi		Urdu^[3]
X	Y^[4] Z^[5]	M^[6]

or another with each language given its own row, and the type of "intelligibility" indicated by some sort of note:

Language	mutually intelligible langs.	notes
Bosnian	Croatian^[7]	spoken & written
Bosnian	Serbian^[8]	spoken & written
Hindi	Urdu^[9]	written only
X	Y^[10]	spoken & written
	Z^[11]	spoken & written
	M^[12]	written only

Another potential advantage of a table is that it can be made sortable...although I'm not sure how that will work with a table like the second, where the rows don't match up precisely.

Any thoughts? rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:37, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Polish vs Czech and Slovak

Sorry, but Polish isn't mutually intelligible with Czech and Slovak. Polish is my native language and I don't understand Czech people, nor Slovaks. Only single words are understood. --SleepySheepy (talk) 08:37, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

The source (Trudgill) claims that Slovak, and Czech to a lesser degree, are mutually intelligible with Polish. Of course, there can always be debate over the degree of mutual intelligibility (for instance, I can't understand some British TV shows without subtitles) and there may be dialectical differences, but overall I think this source is reliable. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 17:45, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

As I said, I am a native Polish speaker. Although Slovaks and Czechs can generally understand each other, whenever I go to the Czech Republic or Slovakia, i HAVE TO use English to communicate with them. I don't know what degree of intelligibility the source you gave talks about,,, but this article says: "In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between languages in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand each other without intentional study or extraordinary effort." <-- According to this definition, Polish isn't mutually intelligible with Czech or Slovak, because i cannot understand Czech nor Slovak without intentional study or extraordinary effort.

Example in Polish: "Poszedłem wczoraj do sklepu i kupiłem truskawki."

Translation to Slovak: "Včera som išiel do obchodu a kúpil jahody."

Meaning in English: "Yesterday I went to the store and bought strawberries."

A native Polish speaker will understand only two words in the Slovak sentence: "Včera" ("Yesterday") and "kúpil" ("bought"). Is it enough to understand the whole sentence? --SleepySheepy (talk) 02:27, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Polish of course is NOT mutually intelligible with Czech and Slovak. First lines of Polish anthem written in Czech:

Ještě Polsko nezhynulo

Dokud ještě žijeme

Co nám cizí moc vzala

Šavlí si zpět vezmeme

and the same lines in original Polish:

Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła

Kiedy my żyjemy,

Co nam obca przemoc wzięła,

Szablą odbierzemy

Is it mutually intelligible?!

A part of Czech anthem:

V kraji znáš-li Bohu milém,

duše útlé v těle čilém,

mysl jasnou, vznik a zdar

a tu sílu vzdoru zmar?

and it's Polish translation:

Czy znasz w ziemi, miłej Bogu,

Wrażliwe dusze w zdrowych ciałach,

Umysł jasny, powstanie i pomyślność,

I siłę tę, zgubę przeciwności?

If these are mutually intelligible, then I say that English is mutually intelligible with Swedish. --Jakas1 (talk) 08:36, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

This is all original research so far. The article has one reliable source claiming Polish is mutually intelligible with Czech and Slovak; are there no sources that say it isn't? +An gr 12:52, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Here's a source that goes so far as to claim all Slavic languages are mutually intelligible "to a very high degree", a claim I find very difficult to believe. +An gr 12:56, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, when I read it, it seems quite similar to me. As I said earlier below: what is "mutually intellegible" seems to differ very much individually. I regard the differences only a little bit more pronounced than those between Dutch and German (on the other hand: those are not (yet)included in the list).--JonValkenberg (talk) 14:11, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

The topic of mutual intelligibility in Slavic languages is a bit difficult. For example, Bulgarian is routinely regarded as a language most distant from the Slavic type and very difficult to understand for most Slavs. In Czech, there even exists a saying "speaking like a Bulgarian" for unintelligible speech. Yet the difficulties in understanding lie mainly in grammar (the non-existence of word-endings, the use of articles). You can listen to a Bulgarian, not to understand a word and doubt, if you are actually listening to an Indo-European language - and then you see a Bulgarian text and you are surprised that you can read it quite with ease. So the difference in understanding spoken language and written language can be huge.

As for the difference between Czech/Slovak and Polish, I must agree with the Polish contributor above that a fluent conversation is not possible. Yet you can certainly understand a lot and conduct some conversation, if you try to be patient. So "a limited intelligibility" would be a more correct term. As for written Polish, Czechs and Slovaks shouldn't have any difficulties with a general understanding Polish text, although quite a few words (especially of technical sort) may seem obscure and untintelligible. However, the closest Slavic language to Czech (after Slovak) is Lusitan Sorbian, especially Upper Sorbian. I don't have any personal experience with this language, but from the written texts I saw I think that its resemblance to Czech can be compared to East Slovakian dialects (which means that you can understand some passages easily, but subsequently you can be lost due to accumulation of weirdly sounding words.) Centrum99 (talk) 02:35, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

German-Dutch (written)?

It seems to me that it's highly individulistic if languages are mutually intelligible. E.g. I can't see much difficulty in understanding Cantonese (written), knowing Mandarin. That goes even more for Spanish and Italian. I guess it depends very much on the general experience of the individual with understanding languages. But what I want to suggest is to put German and Dutch into the category of written only mutually intellegible languages (although again it seems to me that Dutch should be easy for Germans to understand). I have translated Dutch books into German without ever having learned Dutch. This is of course no reference. But maybe this: http://www.linguistik-online.com/13_01/foolen.html Also not a valid reference, but nevertheless: The German Wikipedia lists German and Dutch as mutually intellegible in their written forms. --JonValkenberg (talk) 01:51, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe they are mutually intelligible; structurally, Dutch is more like English than it is like German. And without a reliable source nothing can be added to the page anyway.

I do not think that Dutch is structurally much more like English than German. The syntax of the Dutch language (the word order in subordinate clauses is more or less the same in Dutch AND German) is like the German one. At least, written Dutch is intelligible to German-speaking people. I speak German and I was even able to follow a Dutch political discussion without knowing ANY Dutch - I didn't understand everything, but the sense and the plot was very clear. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.113.102.53 (talk) 19:23, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

And the issue of Cantonese and Mandarin was discussed at great length above...a good example also popped up recently at the Reference Desk, here. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:55, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with JonValkengerg: With a bit of good will and maybe an occasional glance into a dictionary, the two are mutually intelligible in their written forms. Furthermore, to claim Dutch to be structurally nearer to English than to German seems a bit far fetched to me. Still, if this claim cannot be sourced we cannot add it here.Unoffensive text or character (talk) 10:42, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I read the discussion about Mandarin and Cantonese and I didn't want to open the discussion again. It was just a personal statement. Where do you find that Dutch is structurally closer to English than German? As far as I know Dutch and German have been regarded as one language until the 19th century. And an overview of the westgermanic languages seems to show quite clearly a closer relation. I'll try to find a reliable source.--JonValkenberg (talk) 13:44, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I did some quick searching, and these three books all discuss a Dutch-German dialect continuum or "dialect complex", similar to what exists in southern France to northern Italy: a series of local varieties that are pretty intelligible to their neighbors, but where the ends of the continuum are not intelligible to one another:

Davis, Wayne (2003). Meaning, Expression, and Thought. pp. 277–8.
Wardhaugh, Ronald (2009). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. pp. 28–9.
Bernard Comrie (1990). The World's Major Languages.

This search on Google Scholar also got a lot of hits that look like they're about similar stuff (but lots of false hits that are articles about Frisian, rather than Dutch or German), although I haven't yet taken the time to find the articles and look at them carefully. In all, the picture I am getting is one where Standard German and Standard Dutch are not considered mutually intelligible, but border dialects are.

This all raises a bigger question, which I mentioned above, of to what extent we are defining "intelligible". There's no clear answer to how much of language A a speaker of language B needs to understand before they can be called mutually intelligible. For example, as a French speaker I can understand snippets of written Spanish, but I could never call them mutually intelligible. At some point a line needs to be drawn between mere genetic relatedness and real intelligibility; the question is where that line belongs. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 14:12, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Your example of French and Spanish seems to me to be a good example - I also think that (written) Spanish is partly understandable knowing French; but I also would think that is below the border of mutual intellegibility (while I still have few doubts that German and Dutch are mutually intellegible; at least in their written forms. Frisian is somewhere in the middle, as far as I know. I learned that Frisian belongs together with English to the Anglo-Frisian group of Westgermanic languages, while German and Dutch belong to the continental-westgermanic branch. But that might be an outdated model. Maybe you also looked at An Indoeuropean classification: a lexicostatistical experiment by I. Dyen, J. Kruskal, P. Black (they have a chapter about the relation of English and Frisian). In the appendix, p.107, there are the statistics for several languages; the number for German-Dutch is a lot higher than for e.g. Swedish and Danish, which are regarded as mutually intellegible. No idea if this is conclusive, but I would guess it is. What do you think about that?--JonValkenberg (talk) 01:37, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Some problem with reliable scources for mutual intellegibility in order to name them on the list, is that if no scholarly source can be found, the languages would of course not be in the list and might create a B-error, giving the (possibly wrong) impression, that they are not mutually intellegible. Maybe a list of questionable but suspected candidates would make sense?I don't question the importance of reliable sources, but there might be more - even for an encylopedia. (sorry, again no reliable scource for this.:) --JonValkenberg (talk) 01:52, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Maybe we should simply make it clear in the text that omission from the list should not be taken to imply that two languages have no degree of mutual intelligibility. After all, this is a list that can probably never hope to be exhaustive, nor should it be. This is an article about mutual intelligibility after all, not a List of mutually intelligible languages. +An gr 22:12, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree.--JonValkenberg (talk) 13:49, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Armenian?

Seriously? You might as well want to list American English and British English... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 03:24, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree; removed. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 03:39, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

English and Scots

Scots is considered a separate language, and the two are definitely mutually intelligible – as an English-speaker, I can't understand everything (a combination of vocabulary and pronunciation), but simple sentences and things said slowly are pretty easily understood. Any objection to adding them? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Adaman7 (talk • contribs) 22:04, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

If you can find a published source to back it up, go ahead. +An gr 22:07, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Spanish and Italian

Spanish and Italian are actually pretty mutually intelligible in written forms. I have no source to back that up except for personal experience.77.213.191.134 (talk) 10:31, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Dutch and Afrikaans

Why has this been removed? Was there something wrong with my source: http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/21/4/543 ? Afrikaans is an offshoot of the Dutch language and is commonly regarded as having once been the same thing, but having now evolved differently on the other side of the world and accepted influences from English, Portuguese, San, Khoi and some of the other African tribal languages. I speak fluent Dutch but it's not my mother tongue, and even I can understand Afrikaans pretty much perfectly. Indeed, no Dutchman I've asked has ever said they couldn't understand the written form very well and some of the spoken form relatively well. I suppose it's debatable depending on exactly what the standard of mutual intelligibility is (which is also debatable), but frankly if Danish and Swedish are considered to be mutually intelligible by the standards of this page (which most Danes will deny), then I imagine it would be acceptable here. Danish and Norwegian, yes, Norwegian and Swedish, yes, but Danish and Swedish, no. However, yes, all this so far counts as original research, which is why I've included a paper discussing this topic as my source.

What you say might be true, but it is original research. You will need to bring reliable sources to affirm your claim. Ironically, the source were trying to add even contradicts you; quote: "Asymmetries in the linguistic relationships between the two languages are probably more important". Hence the removal. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 18:58, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

87.194.136.93, I suggest you read the abstract more closely. It doesn't say Dutch and Afrikaans are mutually intelligible; it says they were expected to be mutually intelligible because of their genetic relationship but that Gooskens' experiment did not confirm that. If you don't fully understand the abstract, consider looking at the full text of the article, specifically section 2. To be honest, there are some serious issues with the interpretation of their data, based on the performance of the South African subjects on the Afrikaans cloze test, and because of these issues any implications of this study are (as the author herself admits) speculative at best. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 21:50, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

English and German

Written, at least, the two are very similar. dude1818 (talk) 21:34, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Nope. Not mutually intelligible in the least. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:36, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm willing to go far with mutual intelligibility. But German-English? No way. --JonValkenberg (talk) 02:05, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Not even close, despite some common ancestry. __ Just plain Bill (talk) 13:55, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Spanish and Portuguese

I think pretty much every single speaker of both languages can understand the other without much trouble, especially in a written way. In fact, in writing I'd challenge any non-trained non-speaker to tell the difference between them both. In Latin America sometimes products are labelled in both Portuguese and Spanish (as I believe happens in Spain and Portugal) and as a native speaker you can read the other language all the way until you find something a bit different and realise you've been reading the other text... A little example of a sentence:

Portuguese: Vi estas notas de português para comentar antes de ir á casa de José, mas como estamos irritados nunca nos vimos.

Spanish: Vi estas notas de portugués para comentar antes de ir a casa de José, mas como estamos irritados nunca nos vimos.

Try and spot the difference!!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.217.177.159 (talk • contribs) 06:42, 22 April 2010

Bring a source; this article is not a repository for peoples' opinions. Regardless of your opinion, it seems that the issue of mutual intelligibility of these languages is controversial; see, for instance, [2]. rʨanaɢ (talk) 06:53, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh I'm sorry, I thought the article was for FACTS with SOURCES, while the part of DISCUSSIONS was a repository for OPINIONS, you see. And as any native speaker of Portuguese or Spanish can tell you, I provided not source but proof, with two identical sentences belonging to both languages. Meanwhile, the article you mention was written (oh surprise) by an English speaker. If you spoke either language, you'd see that in both the Spanish and the Portuguese Wikipedia these languages are classified as mutually intelligible. But sure, what do we poor speakers know about our understanding each other? You English speakers must know better, for sure... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.216.78.100 (talk) 02:55, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

You seem to misunderstand something. Neither your brain nor your abilities are reliable sources. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 04:51, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

And anyway, constructing one sentence that happens to be spelled the same in both languages doesn't prove anything. I can do that for English and Afrikaans too:

English: My hand is warm.
Afrikaans: My hand is warm.

Wow, English and Afrikaans must be mutually intelligible, huh? Now go to af:Japan and see how much you understand. +An gr 05:31, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Honey, can you count up to four? OK, so my1 hand2 is3 warm4. Now, try hard and count this "Vi estas notas de portugués para comentar antes de ir a casa de José, mas como estamos irritados nunca nos vimos."

Once again, your ignorance is astonishing. 21 words out of hundreds of thousands is still just a tiny fraction. +An gr 06:16, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Mutual intelligibility is a very problematic concept anyway. That may be the reason why it is hard to find any reliable sources on that topic. Whether you understand a foreign language depends very much on your individual abilities and background. A person from Vigo (even if he does not speak Gallego) will be much more exposed to Portuguese, both in spoken and in written form, than a person from Alicante. Thus, he will probably think Portuguese and Spanish are mutually intelligible and will be much surprised when the person from Alicante tells him he cannot understand a single word of spoken Portuguese, as the two languages are worlds apart, phonetically. Unoffensive text or character (talk) 08:50, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Go ahead and stick to your view, we Spanish and Portuguese speakers know better...

This isn't "our view", it's the view of published researchers who have investigated it. You know, people who make studying linguistics their profession and actually know what they're talking about. +An gr 06:16, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Funny discussion. Here's my contribution, though: I'm a perfectly bilingual Spanish-English Mexican-American, and I'd say I understand Brazilian Portuguese much better than your average Ebonics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.216.176.43 (talk) 23:25, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I think that calling other people ignorant while quoting examples from language pairs that don't have the same historical relation isn't productive nor appropiate. Here's a source Here's another source-- Simiyachaq (talk) 23:55, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

One single example of a sentence spelt the same way in Portuguese and Spanish is not proof at all. And, in fact, there is another issue here at hand. Portuguese as it is spoken in Portugal vs. Portuguese as it is spoken in Brazil. And let's just ignore regional differences within each country. Then look at Spanish. Different in Spain from South America. And different from country to country in South America. You give just one example to prove a point? I can give one example of just about everything, but those might just be the exceptions, and not prove anything. As for my personal experience, and I am NOT trying to use this of proof of anything, my wife, Argentinean-born, Paraguayan resident for most of her life had no trouble at all making herself understood in Brazil, even though she spoke in Spanish (and doesn't speak Portuguese) and the people she spoke to replied in Brazilian-Portuguese. It seemed she understood more of their Portuguese than they understood of her Spanish. Just one single example, too.

In addition, when I met my future wife, I had very little knowledge of either Spanish or Portuguese. But I DEFINITELY heard a BIG difference between both languages. The pronunciation of the "j" for instance. And many more sounds. There is no way I would, not even from the very start, confuse Spanish with Portuguese, even though, back then, I didn't know more than 3 words of Spanish and none of Portuguese.

One single example does not prove anything. Not in your case, not in mine. 68.200.97.152 (talk) 02:58, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, this is going to be tough, but I'll try to sort things out, possibly with sources. Portuguese and Spanish ARE mutually intelligible, though, of course, the actuall degree of intelligibility depends on a series of factors.

One of these is schooling — especially for P-speakers, contact with traditional literature exposes the reader to old-fashioned Portuguese words that are the word of choice in Spanish. Here are some examples:

Portuguese word (usual)	Portuguese word (poetic or archaic)	Spanish usual word	Meaning
Esquecer	Olvidar	Olvidar	Forget
Natal	Natividade	Navidad (*)	Christmas
Casamento	Matrimônio	Matrimonio	Marriage/Wedding
Morar (BR)	Viver (usual in PT)	Vivir	To live (e.g. in house)
Professor	Mestre	Maestro (*)	Schoolteacher

In the example above it must be noted that the Spanish word marked with the (*) is not used exclusively, but is used more often than in Portuguese, in that context.

The second factor is familiarity. People who live close to the border of a country where the other language is spoken will get acquainted with it fairly easily, though the language is not readily understood. Similarities are so many that language acquisition is possible by mere immersion. In border regions people may be bilingual and have never been to language school.

Two important restrictions do apply. First, the written form is easier to understand. This is especially true since Portuguese abandoned etymological (traditional) spelling. Nowadays, the two orthographies are fairly similar and cognates are identifiable in most cases. The second restriction is the assymetry of the mutual intelligibility: P-speakers understand Spanish better because the phonetic inventory and the phonetic rules of Spanish are simpler.

All these considerations are found also in the quoted paper above. So I just note it here. But there are some other interesting links. This article [3] details how a monolingual S-speaker managed to speak to a doctor in Germany by means of a P-speaker (actually Portuguese) nurse who could not speak Spanish. This other article [4] is interesting because it discusses how the populations of the border towns of Tabatinga, Amazonas (Brazil) and Letícia (in Colombia) interact. In a region where the school system is generally weak, both popultions keep their cultures but are able to interact seamlessly.

Hope this helps (btw, the articles are in Portuguese, sorry).

jggouvea (talk) 02:20, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Dutch and Afrikaans

Are Dutch and Afrikaans mutualy intelligible? In writing I don't have much difficulty understanding Afrikaans being a Dutch speaker myself. In speach I don't know yet. Ofcourse I am no expert but is there an expert that thinks alike? Quintinohthree (talk) 17:01, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Thus far, no-one has brought a reliable source to back it up, that's the point. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 20:49, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I re-added Afrikaans and Dutch, with some sources. Some of them do emphasise that comprehension may be assymetric (i.e. it is easier for Dutch-speakers to understand Afrikaans than the other way round) and that it is easier to understand the written language than the spoken language (without saying that the spoken language is not mutually intelligible). --Hooiwind (talk) 02:47, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Congratulations... this is the first time someone actually brings some academic sources for this... *sigh* :P Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 02:53, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Some of the sources do not support the claim of mutual intelligibility. I will finish poring over them tonight. rʨanaɢ (talk) 02:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I honestly think all of them support the claim.--Hooiwind (talk) 03:09, 20 May 2010 (UTC) Please check your respective tps, you can find the page numbers in the syntax codes of the citings.--Hooiwind (talk) 03:17, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Page 232 is should be accessible here.--Hooiwind (talk) 03:21, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

It is not accessible for me. As I said in the edit summary, when a source is not available online you can provide a quotation of the relevant part. rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:34, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

That's weird... I can't seem to be able to copy-paste text from the page though. But we have enough other sources I guess.--Hooiwind (talk) 03:41, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

It is easier for a Dutch to understand Afrikaans, than the other way round (since Dutch is basiclly a complicated version of Afrikaans) and so it depends. For example the Dutch have Het and Die, and to some Afrikaners seeing 'In het dorp' is confusing. My family have visited friends in the Netherlands (Maastricht) and they can kind of communicate with them if they speak clearly and take time when having a conversation. Is that Mutual intelligibility? The problem you also get is that some Afrikaans speakers find it offensive when people refer to Afrikaans as a Creole of Dutch, and mutual intelligibility is conveying that? Bezuidenhout (talk) 17:41, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Please note that Maastricht lies in Limburg, which is not Holland (which is just two (of the twelve) provinces of the country); the correct term for the country is "the Netherlands". --JorisvS (talk) 21:33, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I am aware of this, but in England common usage is Holland. I rarely hear people call it 'The Netherlands' (to be honest, the name's too long) :) Just remember this next time Germans or Dutch say 'I am going to England/Grossbritannien (UK)' Bezuidenhout (talk) 21:46, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

What you must also remember is that because Afrikaans people are SO far spread throughout South Africa and becauseo of their low density it has caused some dialects, especially among Coloureds who speak 'Kaaps-Afrikaans' (which is actually quite Amusing). Kaaps-Afrikaans is different in that it is actually 'more' Dutch than Afrikaans itself. Another thing is that Afrikaans in Rural areas is obviously alot 'stronger' do you suppose a Dutch man can understand that? Bezuidenhout (talk) 17:48, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I would really like to see a Dutch person understand this (YouTube). Bezuidenhout (talk) 17:58, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm a native speaker of Dutch, and I can't understand but fragments of it, something I also noted from other times I heard Afrikaans. In my definition of mutual intelligibility, that's within the unintelligible region: communication is significantly hampered. But as different people have very different ideas about when they consider something intelligible there will be sources claiming the two to be intelligible (yes, there will also be claims of intelligibility when much more dissimilar languages are involved). And that's the inclusion criterion here: merely having "decent" source(s) to back up the claim. This has already lead to quite the growth of the list, I'm afraid:(. But if you know a better criterion... --JorisvS (talk) 21:33, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

My parents and aunt also agrees. My aunt (whos first language is Afrikaans) moved to the Netherlands because she married an Afrikaans-speaking Dutchman, and they decided to move to Maastricht. She had to take a half-year course to learn Dutch in order to communicate. She now lives in Flanders (just a little west of Maastricht) and if anything, Flemish is closer to Afrikaans than Dutch. But she still says that they are NOT mutually intelligible. I think one of the principles of mutual intelligibility is the ability to enter another country and be able to communicate with shop-owners/police etc. which I feel Afrikaans speaking people don't have the ability to do. Written, however I think they are very much mutually intelligle. Bezuidenhout (talk) 21:52, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, to be able to engage in such day-to-day conversation without having to intentionally study, so I think this half-year course says a lot. As for the written languages, I have little difficulty reading the Afrikaans Wikipedia. --JorisvS (talk) 22:03, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Again, I am just one person, and I am not going to prove anything based on just my opinion. But I am a native Dutch speaker. And I have met some native Afrikaans speakers in my time. Again, this is JUST my opinion. But they had a LOT more trouble understanding me than I had understanding them. That was while speaking. While reading... well, I could very easily read books written in Afrikaans. I am not trying to sound bad, but the spelling of Afrikaans has been so simplified that even while I was reading a book on physics in Afrikaans, it seemed like it was written by a Dutch 8 year old. VERY understandable. Again, don't get me wrong. Spelling in Afrikaans is SO EASY to read by Dutch people. Because in Afrikaans, they have gotten rid of the "baggage". Just like a lot of letters in the English language still exist in writing but are no longer pronounced. In Dutch, we still have that "baggage". So it's very easy to read Afrikaans. At least, my experience. Again, just one example. Can't prove anything from one example. 68.200.97.152 (talk) 03:07, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

One more thing I would like to say on the Afrikaans vs. Dutch matter... . A lot of people in South Africa had to take a few years of Dutch in school. At least the generation of 40 years or older. And, STILL, they couldn't understand me when I spoke Dutch to them. While I had no trouble understanding them. Either spoken or written. Yes, I think this is an a-symmetric form of mutual intelligibility. With the Dutch understanding much more of Afrikaans than the other way around.

Then, again, there are some Dutch dialects in Belgium that us Dutch really cannot understand, while I think they easily understand "us". So it works both ways. But that's a different story. 68.200.97.152 (talk) 03:16, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Turkish and azeri

They are both mutually intelligible, therefore they should be added to the list —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.129.51.169 (talk) 22:52, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Not only Turkish and Azeri, but the entire family of Turkic languages are mutually intelligible to some degree. I tried to add a reference and added the fact to the list. Candymoan (talk) 10:54, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Swedish and Danish

are not symmetrically intelligible. Most Swedes do not understand spoken Danish without great difficulty (written Danish is not much more difficult than Norwegian). Swedes and Danes can still communicate somewhat, but often just speak English instead. Some kind of source: in Swedish, page 12 and on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.242.109.49 (talk) 18:42, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Xibe and Manchu?

Questioning this addition: Ethnologue claims they are mutually intelligible, but I was a bit surprised—I'm not an expert, but I do know someone who's studied both and who never gave me the impression they were considered mutually intelligible. I know Ethnologue can sometimes be questionable, so I asked for another source, but the other source the editor added was a Wikipedia mirror (and the WP article it was mirroring was also based on Ethnologue; not to mention the mirror itself, sandiegoaccountantsguide.com, was clearly not a reliable source for this kind of thing). I looked around on Google scholar and found this book that says, on p. 420, they're not mutually intelligible. There may be other sources to check as well, though. Does anyone know more about this? rʨanaɢ (talk) 12:07, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Melayu (Brunei & Singapore) and Bahasa Indonesia

These 3 languages above are extremely mutually intelligible, although Bahasa Indonesia is a bit distinct from the former two. They are all rooted from the same language: Bahasa Melayu or Malay language. In Malaysia, any comments from Indonesian speakers especially in news, talk shows, are normally without subtitles... and vice versa. We only put up subtitles for dramas, cartoons, or other scripted shows, where usage of local dialects or accents are strong. If it happens that an Indonesian, a Malaysian and a Bruneian speak to each other, they will surely speak Bahasa of their own without a problem. Even Anggun (Indonesian singer) taught Julian (French singer) how to sing in Bahasa Malaysia, although Anggun is from Indonesia and her mother tongue is Bahasa Indonesia.

Hence... Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Melayu (Brunei & Singapore) and Bahasa Indonesia should be added to the list. Pinangjawa (talk) 03:38, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Sure, just find a reliable source for it and it can be added. +An gr 12:00, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic

I added this before but it was removed, why? Being an Irish speaker, amongst my friends and other classmates, we've all been tested to read Scots Gaelic and pretty much everyone understood it. The Scottish language (and people) are after all descended from Irish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.192.211.252 (talk) 12:58, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Did you also put in a citation supporting your claim? (by the way, "being descended from" doesn't mean much in this context) --JorisvS (talk) 13:28, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Please, add a source. I will try to find one. By the way, you are wrong on the Scottish descended from the Irish. From what I know they are a mix of Irish and English (Germanic). Kanzler31 (talk) 01:51, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

The languages are extremely similar, they are essentially dialects of the same language. Scotts Gaelic speakers are descended from Irish, as is the language itself. This article on wikipedia backs the intelligibility up.[[5]] 86.44.193.45 (talk) 21:01, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

In fact the opposite, it says "Most dialects are not immediately comprehensible". --JorisvS (talk) 22:00, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

The written standards don't have dialects like spoken forms do (not to the same extent, anyway). The written forms do have a very high amount of mutual intelligibility. It's times like this that WP:NOR becomes such a pain - Estoy Aquí (talk) 23:33, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

This is extremely irritating. I completely echo what my Irish cousin says at the start of this section. I am an educated native speaker of Scots Gaelic (with a degree in Celtic Studies), but even before I ever studied Irish at university, I was able to read it with a fair degree of understanding - probably about 50-70%. It's 23 years now since I last actively studied Irish, but I've just been watching the RTE broadcast of the Queen's visit to Dublin and would say I understood 95% of the Irish commentary. I have a friend who is a Scots Gaelic journalist. He attended a conversion course in Dublin to enable him to broadcast on Irish-language radio and TV. It should give you some idea of how close the two languages are when I say that the full course lasted two weeks. The written languages are extremely close, because both are derived from the single Classical Gaelic standard used up until 1700 or so. Learners of one language will certainly have greater problems understanding the other, but please, please can someone find some research which will satisfy the stupidly restrictive standards of Wikipedia and allow us to insert into this article what all native Scots Gaelic and Irish speakers know -- our languages are very largely mutually intelligible, and that is because they are basically the same language, which diverged a few centuries ago because of politics, religion and geography.

And on the topic of our origins -- anyone who looks at the history will quickly find that the original speakers of Scots Gaelic did come from Ireland. That's not considered to be in doubt by anyone, as far as I know. Scots Gaelic was certainly influenced later on by Pictish, Norse and Scots English, but it's simply wrong to argue that the language is not an off-shoot from the earlier Common Gaelic which originated in Ireland. Le gach deagh dhùrachd á Alba/Slán is beannachd! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.44.110.91 (talk • contribs)

To add to what I've just written above -- here is an example of a well-known text in both languages, the Lord's Prayer (the "Our Father"). Can anyone honestly look at these, especially someone who is aware of the spelling conventions of both languages, and tell me that someone who can read one would find it difficult to understand what the other is saying?

Scots Gaelic -

Ar n-Athair a tha air nèamh,

Gu naomhaichear d'ainm.

Thigeadh do rìoghachd.

Dèanar do thoil air an talamh,

mar a nìthear air nèamh.

Tabhair dhuinn an-diugh ar n-aran làitheil.

Agus maith dhuinn ar fiachan,

amhail a mhaitheas sinne dar luchd-fiach.

Agus na leig ann am buaireadh sinn;

ach saor sinn o olc.

Irish -

Ár nAthair atá ar neamh,

go naofar d'ainm,

go dtaga do ríocht,

go ndéantar do thoil ar an talamh

mar a dhéantar ar neamh.

Ar n-arán laethúil tabhair dúinn inniu,

agus maith dúinn ár bhfiacha,

mar a mhaithimidne dár bhféichiúna féin,

agus ná lig sinn i gcathú,

ach saor sinn ó olc.

OK, I'm done. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.44.110.91 (talk) 13:33, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The guidelines for this article are very clear. If you want a pair of languages included, you need to provide a reliable source, not just personal anecdotes, that verifies they are mutually intelligible. rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:10, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

And the two versions of the Lord's Prayer/Our Father don't prove that? Did you actually take time to compare them? I didn't write them myself - they are the normal forms of the Prayer used in both languages. One could show the same using any other standard text. There certainly are differences between Irish and Scots Gaelic, but they are just as mutually intelligible as Turkish and Azeri. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.44.110.91 (talk) 20:44, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, how about a paper on "Dialect Variation in Gaelic Relative Clauses" by David Adger (Queen Mary,University of London) and Gillian Ramchand (University of Tromsø)? They say the following, "As has often been remarked, Gaelic and Irish form a (rather messy) continuum of mutual intelligibility from Lewis to Munster, and yet these days we tend to speak of Scottish Gaelic on the one hand and Irish on the other (see O Baoill, 2000). Similar points have been made about the Inuit languages, which form a dialect continuum such that geographically close communities of speakers are able to understand each other while speakers from either end of the continuum are not (see Chambers and Trudgill, 1980, for general discussion)." Is this adequate? The paper can be found at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.66.8852&rep=rep1&type=pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.44.110.91 (talk) 21:03, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The following website also gives a list of quotations from various works, all supporting the partial mutual intelligibility of Irish and Scottish Gaelic -- http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/~oduibhin/alba/ouch.htm -- in the section in the middle of the webpage beginning "Here are the views of yet more people on the unity of Gaelic." At least two of these certainly do qualify as recently published academic sources:

"Dónall P Ó Baoill, Celtica 13 (1980), pp 102-3: It could indeed be said that the entire area stretching from South Donegal all the way across to Islay and down as far south as Co. Meath, and including most of Kintyre in Scotland and parts of South Argyll and Arran formed a very close linguistic unit."

"James Grant in Léann na Trionóide (2004) p 88: When the different varieties of vernacular Gaelic are examined we find that we are not dealing with three separate languages, but a series of dialects of what is essentially the same language which shade into one another as one moves from the north of Scotland to the south of Ireland."

I'm not going to bother adding anything else. If you're not persuaded by all that I've written in the last few paragraphs, you're not likely to be persuaded by any other evidence I might give. Leis a h-uile beannachd. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.44.110.91 (talk) 21:14, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

As I already said, your own impression about the similarity of two passages does not qualify as a reliable source, it is considered original research; I already linked to those two Wikipedia guidelines above, please take the time to read them so we don't keep arguing in circles.

As for the sources you've listed, none of them specifically says Irish and Scots Gaelic are mutually intelligible. The Adger paper specifically says they are not (in your previous message you seem to have misunderstood the argument being made in this paper). rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:24, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The Adger and Ramchand paper in fact mentions a continuum of intelligibility, without declaring Irish and Scots Gaelic unintelligible. This seems consistent with the "(partial)" caveat which 77.44.110.91 included. I have just added that reference to the article. __ Just plain Bill (talk) 21:35, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Nor does it say these endpoints to be intelligible. --JorisvS (talk) 21:41, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)(I'll still post this, risking some repetition) Ultimately such examples do not matter. We've got the guideline here that all languages added to the list must be properly sourced, this to prevent people from lightly adding a language pair to the list or for some improper reason. From what I've heard so far, Irish and Scottish Gaelic are not unlike Dutch-Afrikaans with respect to mutual intelligibility, something that seems reasonable to expect given their history. This leads me to expect that there should be reliable sources out there that say these are partially intelligible. The documents you provide do not actually say (see WP:synthesis) these are (partially) intelligible, and (from what I've seen and like what you quote) just discuss issues common to dialect continua or closely related languages. --JorisvS (talk) 21:41, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Clearly 77.44.110.91 and Bill don't understand the concept of a dialect continuum, which (as explicitly said in the Adger quote that 77.44.110.91 provided), means that two languages at opposite ends of the continuum are not mutually intelligible, even though they may both be intelligible with intermediate languages. To give another example: there is supposedly a dialect continuum between French and Italian in parts of southern France and northern Italy, but that does not mean anyone would claim French and Italian to be mutually intelligible languages. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:02, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Clearly Rjanag does not understand that a "continuum" is not necessarily a line with ends. English itself is a topologically complex continuum, with e.g. some speakers from rural (US) Georgia unintelligible to some speakers from Mumbai, and vice versa. Further, in the Adger and Ramchand quote, the "explicit" statement that "two languages at opposite ends of the continuum are not mutually intelligible" refers to Inuit, not Gaelic.

Here are two quotes from the second source, "Gàidhlig" agus "Gaeilge" — ouch! that 77.44.110.91 provided:

"It is because we discuss this subject in English that the terms 'Irish', 'Scottish' and 'Manx' obtrude themselves so forcefully, convincing us that we are speaking of three different Gaelic languages."

(The point above being that they are not "three different Gaelic languages.")

"When a Gaelic speaker from Ireland approaches the Gaelic of Scotland, for example, he should approach it as he would approach another form of his own language."

I'll wait for other sources to appear, but the two already presented make a fair case for partial mutual intelligibility. __ Just plain Bill (talk) 10:25, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

JorisvS and Rjanag -- The section on Turkish and Azeri is supported by one reference which isn't even available for examination online. Given that, I'm surprised that you are not willing to accept at least the reference from James Grant. Maybe it was not clear, but "Léann na Trionóide" is an official journal of the School of Irish at Trinity College Dublin. You would think their staff would know what they're talking about. Actually Grant goes even further than I would like you to go, given that I am only asking for the recognition of partial mutual intelligibility. I did say above that I was not going to get involved again in this discussion, but I've remembered something else which should convince any fair-minded, neutral observer. The national, government supported, Gaelic-language radio stations of Scotland and Ireland, BBC Radio nan Gaidheal and RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta, have for many years co-produced a music programme called "Sruth na Maoile." The programme goes out weekly and is co-presented by a speaker of Scots Gaelic and of Irish. It is not in any way a language lesson, but simply for entertainment. Each presenter speaks to the other in their own language, and no explanation is given to the audience of any differences between the two languages/dialects. Both presenters speak the standard forms of their languages rather than some obscure dialect, and at no time do they feel the need to resort to English or another third language to make themselves understood. The music broadcast is a mixture of Irish and Scots Gaelic traditional music. If this is not a concrete, non-subjective example of partial mutual intelligibility in action, then I don't know what is. You can read about and listen to the programme at either http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007tz5q or http://www.rte.ie/rnag/sruthnamaoile.html One Youtube video was enough for German and Yiddish to be included as mutually intelligible at the spoken level, so I really don't see why a radio programme and the article by James Grant cannot be sufficient evidence for the partial mutual intelligibility of Scots Gaelic and Irish.

Oh, and please don't patronise me by assuming I don't know what a dialect continuum is. Just plain Bill is correct, as far as I can see from the article by Adger and Ramchand. Clearly someone who speaks Embo Gaelic (please look it up, if you've never heard of it), who has never heard someone from Dingle, is not going to understand them without a great deal of work, just like the rural Georgian and the Mumbai English speaker. Speakers of more standard forms of Scots Gaelic, Irish and English will have a much easier time of it. Right, I'm definitely done this time. 77.44.110.91 (talk) 19:20, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out Turkish/Azeri. Any more that I've missed? --JorisvS (talk) 20:41, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Will Lamb (2001, Lincom Europe "Scottish Gaelic" ISBN3-89586-408-0) sums it up nicely "The Gaelic languages of Ireland and Scotland are today not mutually intelligible without considerable priming...". O'Rahilly in "Irish Dialects Past and Present" (1988 Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies) says the same but in a more roundabout way "The Gaelic o the unlettered classes in Scotland kept drifting more and more apart from the spoken and still more from the written Gaelic of Ireland. As a result the Irish literary dialect became more and more impossible for Scottish purposes and had inevitably to be discarded". A point of OR; I would say the degree of MI depends on various factors and can vary considerably: the two dialects in question, degree of fluency and intra-language dialect skills, the topic. If you take an Islay speaker and a Donegal speaker with a very high degree of fluency and knowledge of other dialects of their own country and a conversational topic, then there's a limited degree of MI. Take a Wester Ross and a Kerry speaker and you can forget it. I think the sources would support a claim of "limitid innate MI" but "greater latent MI". How you want to word that on the page I have no idea ;) Akerbeltz (talk) 00:23, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Asymmetric intelligibility

It's notorious among linguists that Portuguese speakers often find it easier to understand Spanish than vice versa, and there are presumably other cases, so that there should be some mention or discussion in the article... AnonMoos (talk) 06:05, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Laos-Thai

As a Thai native speaker, I think Laos and Thai should be mutual intelligible in both speaking and writing. Even we use different scripts, it is still very similar. We can understand each other's scripts without any effort. For me, it's even more like another 'font' than another 'script' 92.229.14.229 (talk) 06:54, 6 August 2010 (UTC) canon

Romance languages

I was just wondering what is the relationship between French, Italian and Spanish? Are any of them mutually intelligble? Bezuidenhout (talk) 10:53, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Not nearly. An Italian studying Spanish will have to study quite hard to speak a decent Spanish (I've seen them struggling). French is even more different, so... There exist dialect continua between these languages, with a number of mutually unintelligible varieties in between: something like French-Occitan(with unintelligible "dialects")-Catalan-Spanish and French-FrancoProvençal-Piedmontese-Western Lombard-Emilian-Italian (~Tuscan). --JorisvS (talk) 11:24, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I asked this because according to Lexical similarity, Spanish and Portuguese are 89% similar and Italian and French are 89% similar. I suggest you take an interresting look at the table some down the page, it says that Italian and Sardinian are only at 85% Bezuidenhout (talk) 14:58, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

That's why Sardinian is a distinct language, or more accurately, several distinct languages, the count depending on several things, including whether you consider the northernmost languages Sardinian or Corsican. Also note that Ethnologue lists the lexical similarity between these Sardinian languages as distinctly lower than the 85% with Italian. And even then, a lexically similar word (cognate) need not be intelligible, consider e.g. French /o/ and Italian /akːwa/. --JorisvS (talk) 10:53, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

I've overheard an Italian and a Spaniard talking to each other, each in his native language and with no more than a rudimentary knowledge of the other's language. It worked quite well, though occasionally one or the other had to translate a word or two into English to be understood. +An gr 15:31, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

How much talking was actually going on? And how much is this 'rudimentary'? --JorisvS (talk) 10:53, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

It was a full-fledged conversation. In fact, two, because the two guys met on two different occasions (in my presence at least, maybe they've chatted together when I wasn't around, too). "Rudimentary" means, well, rudimentary. A small amount of simple grammar (they weren't thrown off by the fact that one of them made plurals by changing o to i while the other made plurals by changing o to os), a small amount of simple vocabulary. But the similarities were enough that each could recognize the majority of the other's vocabulary when he heard it. But as I said, intelligibility wasn't 100%; they did have to translate into English once in a while. (They didn't simply speak English the whole time because the Italian guy speaks very poor English, and it was much easier for him to passively understand Spanish and answer in Italian than for him to actively speak English.) +An gr 10:30, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Standard French is mutually intelligible with neither standard (Castilian) Spanish nor standard Italian. There is a dialect continuum around the France-Italy border, but that's not standard. Sure, a French speaker can figure out bits and pieces of Spanish and Italian (particularly written) and even get the general gist, but I've never met any who claims they are mutually intelligible. rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:26, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

As an Italian speaker, I find it very funny that this article doesn't mention Italian-Spanish, Spanish-French, Italian-French and Italian-Romanian. Actually, French is intelligible only on written form, but the rest is very easy on both written and spoken form, for both sides. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 133.9.4.11 (talk) 01:15, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

There are alien words, but Italian-Spanish are definitely intelligible. French-Italian is only intelligible in written form. 77.213.191.134 (talk) 16:00, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Definitely confirm - Italian-Spanish if spoken slowly are partially mutually intelligible - French-Italian only written - --Itemirus^{Message me!} 17:37, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Afrikaans

If Italian and French are as similar as Dutch and Afrikaans (89/90% according to that list) then surely Afrikaand and Dutch are not mutually intelligle? But then again I guess many differences between Afrikaans and Dutch are just new spellings with the same sound (e.g. ij > y; z > s etc.). Can I please have some Dutch people's opinions on the matter? Like for example can anyone read this article (on Afrik. wiki) or understand listening to this YouTube video? Bezuidenhout (talk) 14:56, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Please remember that the above video is 'formal Afrikaans' (since it's the news) so can anyone understand this, or this? Bezuidenhout (talk) 15:04, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Italian and French are definitely less similar than Dutch and Afrikaans. I could make out pretty much all of what was said in the news fragment, especially the second time I listened, though I had to effortly watch it for this. The not-so-formal scenes are more difficult, but it could be due to the noise present. I will typically manage reading Afrikaans, though I must say I had a little more difficulty than I'd expected reading the example you gave. I'd like to note that I can read Portuguese pretty well knowing Spanish far from perfectly. --JorisvS (talk) 19:14, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

All this would be WP:OR. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 05:30, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Sure, if anyone was trying to include it in the article unsourced. But no one is at the moment; right now, we're just chatting about possibilities to be investigated further. +An gr 06:40, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 06:43, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I could read the Wikipedia article perfectly and I understood 95% of the videos(news 100%, straattaal a little less but was good to understand). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.249.49.241 (talk) 18:46, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

French and Italian

If ethnolouge states that they share a 89% lexical similarity, they are mutually intelligible. If they are to be mutually intelligible, they must exceed a 85% lexical similarity. Since they do, should we add them to the list?--Kanzler31 (talk) 17:18, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Where do you get that cut-off criterion and why would that be a valid one? Oh, and it looks like you're saying "if A then B; we have B, thus A", which is misusing logic. --JorisvS (talk) 18:37, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Just bringing the issue into discussion. And the reason I bring up ethnologue is because they are a world linguistic organization.Kanzler31 (talk) 21:15, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh, that's fine, really. As you brought up the issue, I critically enquire its aspects. Also, Ethnologue is not infallible, a blatant mistake I spotted was that Ethnologue omits Ossetian completely from Russia (e.g. this map), even though most speakers live there. --JorisvS (talk) 21:46, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

French and Italian are simply not mutually intelligible. This was discussed just a couple days ago. rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:19, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Chinese

Shouldn't Chinese and a sample of Chinese languages be listed under the "written" section? Daniel Quinlan (talk) 00:31, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Nope. See previous discussion. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:48, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Lao and Thai (Written forms)

A Thai user said that Laotian and Thai are mutually intelligible, both spoken AND written (The user went as far as to say Lao looks more like a font rather than a separate script). Can any Thai users read the Lao wikipedia and Lao speakers read the Thai wikipedia to see if they are mutually intelligible (written)?Kanzler31 (talk) 19:27, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Italian and Judaeo-Spanish

This source claims that Judaeo-Spanish and Italian are mutually intelligible, although I'm not so sure to add this. Can anyone clarify? Can any speakers of Judaeo-Spanish read the Italian wikipedia and Italians read the Judaeo-Spanish wikipedia to add this to the list? We know Spanish and Italian are only partially intelligible in written form (spoken form is very hard) Thanks. Kanzler31 (talk) 21:29, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I would have thought Judaeo-Spanish and Spanish are mutually intelligble. Here is a sample of Judaeo-Spanish and some other in the same text. Bezuidenhout (talk) 13:18, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

The question was about Judaeo-Spanish and Italian. rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:42, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I know but I thought that Judaeo-Spanish would be more closely related to Spanish than Italian since that is where the language originated. I put down a sample below for any linguists to see in case Judaeo-Spanish would be similar to any languages. Bezuidenhout (talk) 06:33, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Can anyone get a Italian sample? Kanzler31 (talk) 23:39, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Samples

Comparison with other languages

Judeo-Spanish

El djudeo-espanyol, djudio, djudezmo o ladino es la lingua favlada por los sefardim, djudios ekspulsados de la Espanya enel 1492. Es una lingua derivada del espanyol i favlada por 150.000 personas en komunitas en Israel, la Turkia, antika Yugoslavia, la Gresia, el Maruekos, Mayorka, las Amerikas, entre munchos otros.

Spanish

El judeo-español, djudio, djudezmo o ladino es la lengua hablada por los sefardíes, judíos expulsados de España en 1492. Es una lengua derivada del español y hablada por 150.000 personas en comunidades en Israel, Turquía, la antigua Yugoslavia, Grecia, Marruecos, Mallorca, las Américas, entre muchos otros.

Catalan

El judeocastellà, djudiu, djudezmo o ladino és la llengua parlada pels sefardites, jueus expulsats d'Espanya al 1492. És una llengua derivada de l'espanyol i parlada per 150.000 persones en comunitats a Israel, Turquia, antiga Iugoslàvia, Grècia, el Marroc, Mallorca, les Amèriques, entre moltes altres.

Asturian

El xudeoespañol, djudio, djudezmo o ladino ye la llingua falada polos sefardinos, xudíos expulsados d'España en 1492. Ye una llingua derivada del español y falada por 150.000 persones en comunidaes n'Israel, Turquía, na antigua Yugoslavia, Grecia, Marruecos, Mayorca, nes Amériques, entre munchos otros.

Galician

O xudeo-español, djudio, djudezmo ou ladino é a lingua falada polos sefardís, xudeos expulsados de España en 1492. É unha lingua derivada do español e falada por 150.000 persoas en comunidades en Israel, en Turquía, na antiga Iugoslavia, Grecia, Marrocos, Maiorca, nas Américas, entre moitos outros.

Portuguese

O judeu-espanhol, djudio, djudezmo ou ladino é a língua falada pelos sefarditas, judeus expulsos da Espanha em 1492. É uma língua derivada do espanhol e falada por 150.000 pessoas em comunidades em Israel, na Turquia, na antiga Iugoslávia, Grécia, Marrocos, Maiorca, nas Américas, entre muitos outros.

English

Judeo-Spanish, Djudio, Judezmo, or Ladino is a language spoken by the Sephardi Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. It is a language derived from Spanish and spoken by 150,000 people in communities in Israel, Turkey, the former Yugoslavia, Greece, Morocco, Majorca, the Americas, among many others.

After reading that as an Italian I actually found the Catalan one to be the easiest to understand 77.213.191.134 (talk) 16:03, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Galician and Spanish

I noticed that the Galician and Spanish pair was removed months ago even though there was a source (Previous discussion). I also found ANOTHER source citing mutual intelligibility: [6]. Kanzler31 (talk) 20:33, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Afrikaans and German (written)

As I found a source for Dutch and German, I am wondering weather German and Afrikaans are mutually intelligible at least in written form. I am not a speaker of neither of these languages, so I would like some native speakers to comment.Kanzler31 (talk) 23:16, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Definitley not, Afrikaans and Dutch are barely mutually intelligible themselves, I have a Dutch family at my house at the moment, and we can only speak English with them. Some words in Afrikaans and German are too distant.

I love you

"Ek is lief vir jou" (Af)
"Ich liebe dich" (De)

I don't eat Potatoes

"Ek eet nie aartappels nie." (Af)
"Ich esse keine Kartoffeln." (De)
If there was some mutual intelligibility, it would only be from the German side, because Afrikaans only has the nominiative case, no genders, and all verbs are held in the infinitive (e.g. Ek is, jy is, ons is: compared to German; Ich bin, du bist, wir sind). Bezuidenhout (talk) 06:51, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree. They're not. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 07:51, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree too. A German might decipher some words, maybe on some occasions a sentence, but no more. I can understand some written French, being a Spanish speaker, but I could never call it mutually intelligible. Kanzler31 (talk) 21:34, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Kazakh & Kirgiz

I read on a Russian forum that Kazakh and Kirgiz spoken in Central Asia are mutually intelligible with each other, Is this true or or not? Or is this just the border regions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oleg polkni (talk • contribs) 06:03, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Very similar, but not mutually intelligible as far as I know. Someone who has learned one can learn the other very quickly, though. rʨanaɢ (talk) 12:57, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Who are you to dictate your personal opinion here? Kazakh and Kyrgyz are mutually very intelligible with each other. Read academic sources on Turkic languages. Find a Kazakh or Kyrgyz person from facebook, youtube or an internet forum then ask him/her about this topic. Kazakh is also mutually intelligible with Nogay, Karachay, Tatar, Kumyk as well. Besides, there is intelligibility of various degrees between all Turkic languages except for Chuvash and Yakut. Because, they began to separate from one another very lately (500-600 years ago) compared to Germanic or Romance/Latin languages which separated from one another 1500-1600 years ago. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.231.157.166 (talk) 13:22, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I never "dictated my personal opinion"; I said as far as I know. All I have to go on is personal experience with other Turkic languages. If you can provide a source verifying mutual intelligibility, these languages can be added to the article. rʨanaɢ (talk) 13:26, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Xhosa and Zulu

What to these languages have in common? I'm considering expanding the list but with more African languages. Thanks. Kanzler31 (talk) 01:31, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there is much mutual intelligibility between Xhosa and Zulu. They say the difference between the African languages in South Africa is much similar to the languages of Europe, such as between German/French etc. In South Africa there are two language groups:

The Nguni language:

Zulu
Xhosa
Swazi
Southern Ndebele

And the Sotho-Tswana languages

Tswana
S. Sotho
N. Sotho

Even though Xhosa and Zulu are in the same family, if we simply compare the word "Republic of South Africa", it comes to be iRiphabhuliki yaseNingizimu Afrika in Zulu and iRiphabliki yomZantsi Afrika. Although this is a bad example, I believe Xhosa and Zulu are too far apart. However there are two mutual intelligbilities I am wanting to know, and that is between Zulu and Swazi, and between Norther Sotho and Southern Sotho. I have heard at some points in time that they have been mutual intelligble, all I need now is a source? :) Bezuidenhout (talk) 08:11, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, just to further add: The Nguni people are also separated into Northern Nguni people and Southern Nguni people. Xhosa are Southern, while Swazi and Zulu are northern. Bezuidenhout (talk) 08:12, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I found this source, which states that SeSotho (Southern Sotho), SeTswana (Tswana) and SePedi (Northern Sotho) are mutually intelliglbe. Could we maybe add this? Bezuidenhout (talk) 08:27, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I would like some samples of these languages to check if they actually are Mutually intelligible.

I found some phrases/words with can go together:

Free State
Fuleyistata (swazi)
IFleyistata (zulu)
Freyistata (xhosa)
Freistata (southern sotho)

Capital City
Inhlokodolobha (swazi)
Isiqongo (zulu)
iKhapitali (xhosa)
Motsemoholo (southern sotho)
Musanda (venda)

There is definitley no correlation between Nguni languages and Sotho-Tswana languages, but it's the matter of inside these language groups where there can be some mutual intelligbility. Bezuidenhout (talk) 16:39, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Mutually intelligible languages in ancient times.

I will try to find sources to expand this section. Here are some possible examples:

Kanzler31 (talk) 18:13, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Slovene?

I'm wondering how Slovene differs from it's Serbo-Croatian cousins. As a native speaker of Spanish, I can read Portuguese and Galician flawlessly and read much Italian and Catalan fairly well. And for the Slavic languages, it seems that speakers of the Serbo-Croatian languages can generally read each other's languages well, but nobody seems to understand Slovene. Can anyone answer why Slovene is so different from it's Serbo-Croatian cousins? Can a Serb, Croat, Bosnian or Slovene have a say? --Kanzler31 (talk) 22:28, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin are (structurally) one and the same language, even though they would have us believe otherwise. The differences between them are marginal (cf. American and British English). Slovene, however, is a separate language. As the written forms of closely related languages often have a higher level of mutual intelligibility than their spoken counterparts (as you've illustrated, I can't say anything about written Slovene and written Serbo-Croatian. --JorisvS (talk) 15:50, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

How about Slovene and Slovakian? Just a quiery? Bezuidenhout (talk) 16:22, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

The name. Slovene is South Slavic, Slovak West Slavic. --JorisvS (talk) 16:48, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

From what I have heard, many Slavs consider Slovene the most difficult language to learn (possibly next to Bulgarian, due to Bulgarian's phonology) although in the previous discussion archives a Serb commented and said it only took him 30 minutes to learn written Slovene. Any other comments? BTW, I extremely doubt any Slovakian is able to understand Slovene without major troubles.

This is most probably correct. I - as a Czech - find Slovenian as the most difficult Slavic language for me to understand. It may not be so difficult for Serbs, but it is really very difficult for other Slavs. When reading Slovenian, I can understand some passages easily, but others look like words from some strange non-Indoeuropean language. Centrum99 (talk) 19:49, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Slovene is highly understandable for most speakers of northern Croatian (kajkavian) dialect (spoken by about 31% of population of Croatia). Otherwise, for most of other speakers of Serbo-Croatian it's not simple at all. Slovenians, on the other hand, may have more contact with Serbo-Croatian then vice versa (through popular culture, vacations in Croatia etc.), but many don't understand it, especially younger people who went to school after Yugoslavia broke up, so they didn't have to learn it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.138.55.50 (talk) 17:09, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

English and Norfuk

As a Native English speaker I literally have no trouble reading Norfuk texts. I really think that this should be added to the list. Scottiessoulja (talk) 16:32, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Seems credible (I tried reading http://pih.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfuk), but we need a reliable source before we can add it to the article. There is longstanding agreement at this article not to add examples to the list based only on anecdotal/personal evidence. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:57, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Danish and Swedish

According to the "reliable sources" policy should we consider reference nr 6 reliable? Bø, I (1976). "Ungdom od nabolad. En undersøkelse av skolens og fjernsynets betydning for nabrospråksforstålen.". Rogalandsforskning // Google translates that as "Young od nabolad. A survey of the school and the importance of television for nabrospråksforstålen." - Shall we delete the entry? --Itemirus^{Message me!} 17:49, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

It actually translates to: "Youth and neighboring countries. A study/survey of the school's and the television's significance in terms of language understanding between the neighboring countries (Scandinavian countries)." It seems perfectly legitimate/reliable to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.145.177.104 (talk) 20:57, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Ok - is there an ISBN? Searching on Google for the title of the book yields no results except for those that link to this Wikipedia article. Also, the author is totally unknown. Rjanag, do you consider this source perfectly legitimate and reliable as well??--Itemirus^{Message me!} 07:53, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

It appears to be published in a journal, which is all I can say about it. Since I don't read Norwegian, I'm not in a position to comment on it.

Nor am I interested in picking fights with editors who are just out to make a point. I know what you're trying to do here. Please read WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS: even if the reference is bad, the presence of a bad reference somewhere else doesn't give you the right to add your own bad references. rʨanaɢ (talk) 08:06, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

This is nothing personal Rjanag, i have never put up fights with anyone here and i will not begin now - also i acknowledge you are a more expert editor than me - yet i wonder what is the use of listing a reference if no one (not only you) is in a position to comment on it since it either does not exist or it is impossible to retrieve - i might as well list a misleading reference such as Studio statistico sull'intelligibilità della lingua spagnola parlata dai turisti in visita a Roma (Statistical report over the intelligibility of the spanish language as spoken by tourists visiting Rome) , G.F. Rossi, 1973 - page 46 and claim it is reliable and legitimate; now go prove it is not. It is evident that the source i am challenging is not only questionable, but totally unverifiable since it is not retrievable, besides lacking a proper translation into english. I will open a discussion at WP:RSN - Much ado about nothing? Probably, but still...--Itemirus^{Message me!} 17:50, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

After 30 seconds on Google I found this speech transcription (http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/kd/aktuelt/taler_artikler/politisk_ledelse/statssekretar-lisbet-rugtvedt/2007/nasjonal-oppfolging-av-den-nordiske-spra.html?id=487159) on the Norwegian government's official website mentioning the study from 1976. So there's a reference. However, there are hundreds of studies on this topic so finding a newer study in English that can be used as a reference for the Danish-Swedish partial mutual intelligibility should not be a problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.145.177.104 (talk) 13:54, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

The fact that Danish and Swedish are partially intelligible is already in the article with a good source. --JorisvS (talk) 14:59, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Measurement

How is mutual intelligibility measured systematically? -- Beland (talk) 06:16, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

There aren't formal, agreed-upon methods, although the article and the discussions above cite some papers which discuss this. Lexical similarity is measured systematically, although mutual intelligibility consists of more than just lexical similarity. rʨanaɢ (talk) 06:19, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Psycho-cognitive traits?

What in the world is this meaning? (Linguistic/verbal) intelligence? If so, please state it (and link appropriately). Allens (talk) 12:33, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

UCLA source

I'm not so sure about that source. I've skim-read a few other pages and it's full of little errors (like stating there are 3 Basque languages and that Alvan (rather than Alavan) is a dialect - which it may have been except it's been dead for so long that we have not data really) and a bloomer about Chinese writing. Thoughts? Akerbeltz (talk) 18:13, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Romanian / Moldovan

needs adding 82.46.109.233 (talk) 23:58, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Reliable source needs citing. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:22, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

those two are actually considered the same language nowadays... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 00:24, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Danish and Norwegian

In the article it says that Danish and Norwegian are only partially mutually intelligible. It should be noted that Danish and Norwegian are fully mutually intelligible when Norwegian is written in Bokmål - it is simply not possible to write anything in Bokmål that a Dane wouldn't fully understand - and vice versa - apart from a few faux amis. However, Spoken Norwegian and spoken Danish are not very similar and therefore only partially mutually intelligible. I therefore suggest that it is noted in the article that there is a great difference between spoken and written in terms of intelligibility.

"Norweigen"

Can we make sure about Norweigen as either being Bokmal or Nynorsk? I heard that Bokmal is very closely related to Danish while Nynorsk was an attempt to create a new norweigen language different from Danish. Please can someone else confirm this and add to the list "Bokmal" either completely or in brackets? Bezuidenhout (talk) 19:12, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

It is correct that Norwegian Bokmål is mutually intelligible with Danish whereas Nynorsk is slightly more difficult for a Dane to understand and may only qualify for a partial mutual intelligibility. However, to my knowledge a Norwegian who speaks mostly in Nynorks won't have any more trouble understanding Danish than a Norwegian who speaks mainly Bokmål-esque (I am aware that you can't exactly speak Bokmål but some dialects are more like it than others) as all Norwegians master most dialects and both written forms, naturally. So it really only goes the one way. The reason for this is, as you mentioned, that Bokmål essentially is a sort of Dano-norwegian that existed due to the Danish domination of Norway and Nynorsk was an attempt to make Norwegian more dinstinguished and make the spelling fit the phonetics of the language better.

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