Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 November 28

= November 28 =

Malayalam and Tamil
Is spoken Malayalam mutually intelligible with spoken Indian Tamil? 99.245.73.51 (talk) 07:27, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Spoken Tamil isn't even necessarily mutually intelligible with itself. I know speakers of Tamil Nadu Tamil who don't understand anything that speakers of Sri Lanka Tamil say. Some speakers of Tamil may be able to understand Malayalam - but that would not really tell us anything about the relatedness of the two languages, but more about the speakers. Other speakers might not be able to understand it at all. Whether people understand another language depend on many factors - for example the degree of exposure to the other language and to other languages in general.·Maunus· ƛ · 19:46, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

This question was only asked a couple of days ago. Unfortunately, Wikipedia is not allowing me to go through the archives, but the conclusion was that it depended on the speakers, but generally yes. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  13:02, 28 November 2010 (UTC)


 * You're probably meaning this thread. --Theurgist (talk) 13:36, 28 November 2010 (UTC)