Mutually intelligible languages

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Mutually intelligible languages are those whose speakers can understand each other, either in their written or spoken form, without the need to have special studies or knowledge of other languages; That is, two speakers of different varieties can understand each other without having previously learned the other's variety. We then speak of mutual intelligibility as a property of these linguistic varieties.

Mutual intelligibility exists between many languages or varieties geographically close and belonging to the same language family in the context of a dialect continuum that are similar in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation or other characteristics, often relatively easy for the respective speakers achieve a certain degree of intercomprehension.

Definition

Mutual intelligibility is a property of linguistic varieties or dialects by which two speakers of different varieties can understand each other without having previously studied or learned the other variety. It is actually a property that is not very well defined, since intelligibility is a matter of degrees and subjectivity, and also depends on several other factors, such as the educational and cultural level of the speaker, the linguistic ability of the individual, etc. Due to gradualness and subjectivity, and the difficulties of exactly defining the differences between dialects and languages, there is no consensus on which languages meet the criterion.

Difficulties with the concept

Traditionally it has been said that two highly mutually comprehensible dialect varieties are dialects of the same language. However, there are some difficulties:

No-transition. Given three varieties A, B and C. It can happen that A and B are mutually intelligible to a high degree, and that B and C are also mutually intelligible to a high degree, and yet A and C are practically inintelligible. For example, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Castilian and Catalan, and between Catalan and Occitan, however Castilian and Occitan are difficult to understand each other.
Asymmetry. In some cases, varieties A and B have been found, such that the understanding of B by A speakers is very different from A's understanding by B speakers. For example, a speaker from the European standard Portuguese understands Spanish perfectly, but for a Spanish speaker it is a little less intelligible Portuguese for the phonetic and phenological differences regarding Spanish.

The first of these difficulties challenges the traditional description that a language historically is the set of its mutually intelligible dialects. The situation occurs, for example, in the Eskimo-Aleutian languages where each dialect is intelligible with the closest ones, but not with the most distant ones, although the intermediate dialects can be intelligible with the dialects at the ends of a geographical chain of dialects or dialect complex..

The difficulties caused by the criterion of mutual intelligibility can be seen in the geopolitical situation of European languages. On the one hand, Swedish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible although due to sociopolitical factors they are considered different languages. On the other hand, several of the rural varieties labeled as German are intelligible to speakers of varieties of Dutch but not to speakers of other varieties of Dutch. German^{[citation required]}.

On the other hand, there are numerous languages among which, although strictly related to each other, there is not even the slightest mutual intelligibility. For example, Hungarian and Finnish belong to the same family and linguistic group, however only a dozen basic words are common in both languages, not to mention the morphological differences between them despite both being agglutinatives with vowel harmony.

Linguistic areas

Main articles: Sprachbund and Language.

In linguistic terms, we speak of mutual intelligibility and intercomprehension between different languages. Similarly, in geographical terms, linguistic areas are called territories that include different languages or dialects that share both linguistic definitions, according to the level of intercomprehension they present. In the case of territories that include variants of the same language (dialectal varieties that do not constitute distinct languages), these areas are called Sprachraum (lit. 'space of speech'); while in the case of different languages with a certain level of mutual intelligibility, or when they share grammatical, phonetic and/or syntactic systems that give them a certain similarity, these areas are called Sprachbund (lit. 'union of speak').

Lists of mutually intelligible languages

Intelligible in writing and pronunciation

Indo-European

Germánicas
- Afrikaans and Dutch - are distant varieties derived from the same language, the average Dutch. Partially intelligible
- German and Luxembourg.
- German and yidis - verbal, but partially intelligible (the first uses the Latin alphabet, the second uses the Hebrew alphabet).
- Dutch, limburgués and under German - They are partially intelligible in the verbal and written modalities.
- Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and dalecarlian - these four languages are considered to be practically understandable. The Danish written and the Norwegian bokmål form a linguistic continuum, but the phenology and prosody of both are very different. Meanwhile, the Icelandic and the Feroés, although they also belong to the northern Germanic (and derived directly from the western ancient Nordic) have very remarkable differences with the remaining Nordic languages due to their little linguistic evolution.
- Icelandic and ferocious - in writing are highly intelligible, however pronunciation is different becoming partially intelligible in orality.
- English and Lallans - both derive from ancient English.

Slavs.
- Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian and Russian. Of these varieties the Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian are highly intelligible, both derived from the old Ruthenian, while the intelligibility with the Russian is a little lower. They are also partially intelligible to the Polish in the spoken form. The first four are written in Cyrillic alphabet and Polish in Latin alphabet.
- Croat, Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin can be classified as a single language, which would be the serbocroata, which is also part of the southern Slavic group and is highly intelligible with Macedonian and, to a lesser extent, with Slovenian and Bulgarian, with these more significant differences.
- Bulgarian and Macedonian - They are highly intelligible to each other; the Bulgarian is partially intelligible with the serbocroata and the Slovenian, while the intelligibility of Macedonian with serbocroata increases considerably.
- Polish, Slovak, Czech, silesium, casubio, moravo and sorabo make up the Western Slavic group. All are written with the Latin alphabet contrasting with the Eastern Slavic languages. Silesium, casubio and moravo are often regarded as dialects of Polish, Czech and Slovak. Czech and Slovak are almost entirely mutually intelligible; the intelligibility of both with the Polish, on the contrary, is only partial.

Romances
- French and oïl languages such as the valon or the Norman.
- Catalan and Occitan - Catalan and Occitan are highly intelligible in the written form but the pronunciation of the two is different. Intelligibility varies depending on the different West dialects. They are also distant varieties of the same language. Therefore it is said that they form a diasystem, the West-Romanic.
- Portuguese and Galician - both derive from the same language, the Galaico-Portuguese, being the differences more than lexica or grammatical. They are often defined as separate languages, even though some say they are dialects or a diasystem. According to data EthnologueThere is a degree of intelligibility of 95% between Galician and Portuguese. However, intelligibility is asymmetric, since for Galicians it is much more difficult to understand Portuguese, especially the variants of the center-sur.
- Spanish and Portuguese, both understand very well in writing. However, oral understanding is more complicated by having Portuguese a complex phonetic system. Intelligibility itself varies depending on the dialects.
- Spanish, Portuguese and Italian standard - They are intelligible to a large extent by the graph, the Italian is a little further away in this aspect due to its use of words but is closer to Spanish by pronunciation.
- Spanish, asturleon, Aragonese, Catalan, Galician and Portuguese. They are intelligible to each other by their writing and pronunciation. The Spanish, Aragonese, Galician and Asturleonian varieties have a similar pronunciation and are therefore highly intelligible although they use different technical words. The intelligibility of Portuguese and Catalan with respect to the latter often asymmetrical, since Catalan speakers tend to understand the speakers of Aragonese and Galician, and those of Portuguese to those of Asturleon and Galician and, in the case of the Catalans, also to those of Spanish for being bilingual. Between Portuguese and Catalan there is some understanding that however is limited to some cases.
- Spanish and Judeo-Spanish - the Judeo-Spanish or Ladin is the language derived from Spanish that have used the descendants of the Jews expelled from the Crown of Castile in 1492. In fact, the latter is an archaic form of Spanish, but written in Hebrew alphabet.
- French, French, West, and Piemontés - All share some vocalycal sounds and similar words besides having the vowel (y) in the letter u.
- Lombard, piemontés, emiliano-romañol, ligur and véneto - They form the group of Galician languages and are to some extent mutually intelligible, rendering however the ligur considerably. They are also partially intelligible with the italorromance languages (including the standard Italian) and the re-Roman languages.
- Standard Italian, Corso, Romanesque, Sicilian and Neapolitan - They form the group of Italian languages and are in good or some intelligible measure, with distinctions. They are also partly intelligible with the languages of northern Italy (especially with the véneto)
- Romanche, ladino and friulano - They form the group of re-Romantic languages and in turn are partially intelligible with other Romance languages of northern Italy especially with the Galloitálic languages.
- Romanian, Arruman, Meglenorrumano and Istrorumano - They constitute the group of Balkan languages and are mutually intelligible that these last varieties were previously considered dialects of Romanian, but have never been classified as dialects of this last language.
- Moldovan and Romanian - for political issues are considered different languages, but the reality is that they are identical, Moldovan and Romanian are written with the Latin alphabet, only in Transnistria the Moldovan is written only with the cyclic alphabet. In 2013 the Constitutional Court of Moldova interpreted the official language of the country as Romanian.
- Interlingua, lingua franca nova and various Romance languages. The first two are artificial languages whose vocabulary was mainly taken from the Roman and Latin languages, which makes them mutually intelligible with various Romance languages, although there are also certain vocablos taken from other Indo-European languages, but their presence is smaller. A large difference of interlingua and the lingua franca nova with respect to Romance languages, is the simplified grammar, based on those of other non-Romantic or even non-indoeuropean languages.

Celtic languages
- Irish and Scottish gaelic, partly.
- Welsh, Breton and Corn, partly.

Indo-iranias
- Maratí and konkani.
- Panyabí, hindi, urdu, guyaratí, seraiki - in the case of Urdu and Hindi are the same language written with different alphabets (the arabic urdu for the first and the devanagari for the second), also use different technical words.
- Persian, dari, tayiko and bukhori (judeo-bukhari-persia) - linguistically speaking are variants of the first language, distinguished by political-cultural issues.

Austronesians

Samoan, Tongano, Tuvaluan and Tokelauano.
Cebuano, samareño, hiligainón and other bisaya languages.
Philippine and tagalo, the first can be considered a tagalore dialect.
Malay and Indonesian, linguistically speaking, are two variants of the same language, distinguished by political-cultural issues.
Malayo-indonesio and other Malian languages such as minangkabau.

Tai-Kadai

Thai, Laosian, tai lü and shan.
zhuang and bouyei.

Turkish

Turk, Azeri, Turkman, Gagahuzo, Crimean Tatar, Urum and Salar.
- qashqai and khalaj.
Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Altái, Nogayo and Karakapalpako.
Uzbeko and uigur.

Fino-ugrias

Finés, estonio, carelio, võro, meänkieli, ingrio, kven and vepsio - except grammatical differences, their mutual intelligibility carries at least 70% to 90%.

Northern Caucasians

Ingusetio and Chechen

Tunguses

Xibe and manchu

Bantus

Zulu, xhosa and Swazi.
Bukusu and massed
Kiñaruanda and kirundi

Sino-Tibetan

Dungano and Mandarin Chinese - the first seems to be a variant of Mandarin Chinese written in Cyrillic alphabet.
Akha, honi and hani.

List of related but unintelligible languages

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