Talk:Mutual intelligibility

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[edit] 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)

[edit] Vietnemese

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

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

[edit] Hebrew

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

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

== German...

Are standard dutch and Hochdeutsch (High German) intelligible?

  • I'd say no - one can "puzzle it out" (as one can with the Scandinavian languages) - but according to the definition they are not really mutually intellegible. As far as I know, Dutch is more closely related to Low German anyway ... maybe somebody would like to comment on how mutually intelligible they are? Elf-friend 08:52, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I - a Dutch speaker - haven't ever heard Low German spoken, but I'm perfectly able to understand the Plattdüütsch wikipedia... does that count? Benji man

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

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

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

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

[edit] German and Yiddish

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

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

[edit] French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian

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

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


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

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

I believe Spanish and Portuguese are indeed mutually intelligible considering that the two languages are actually very similar (see Differences between Spanish and Portuguese for further details). Having said that, my experience is that very few native Spanish speakers actually manage to become fluent speakers of proper Portuguese and, vice-versa, very few Lusophones are capable of speaking proper Spanish. The reason is that, paradoxically, the two languages are so close that interference from one's native language is inevitable when trying to speak the other, leading to the common Portuguese-Spanish mixture otherwise known as portuñol.
In my Spanish class the ONLY person to ever get 100% on a test was a Lusophone. The
Hispanophones didn't manage to actually spell correctly and generally thought it ::would be an easy class and failed. The most dedicated Anglophones got the second ::best marks. -Iopq 14:32, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

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

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

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

I speak decent Spanish, and I can understand some spoken Portuguese and almost all written Portuguese. However, with French I have considerably more difficulty.Cameron Nedland 13:37, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I speak Spanish, and reading Portuguese for me is like reading Shakespeare and I would say that Italian is about as difficult as Chaucer. I just read this 62-word paragraph on the Italian Wikipedia, and I can say that I have a vague idea what about 55 of the words mean, but I don't know for sure. I can take about three ideas away from it: (1) Banana Joe is involved in the banana trade, (2) that he lives in a small village in Amantido in South America, (3) that some mafia boss from San Cristobal gets involved, also, and (4) that a casino is constructed in the village. I had to read it three times, though. I also just read this 100-word paragraph and understood about 60 of the words, but get the general idea how he wasn't sucessful, although Don Quixote was popular and that he didn't try to be popular...(is that what it says?) I also had to read that several times. I agree that just listening to someone speaking Italian wouldn't work beyond single-word statements, and listening to Portuguese is much-more difficult than reading it.

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

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

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

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

[edit] Written Chinese/Japanese

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

Both languages share the usage of Chinese characters (known in Japanese as Kanji), and a large portion of them share the same meanings. However written Chinese uses entirely Chinese characters, whereas written Japanese has Chinese characters plus their own writings. The similarities reaches as far as place names and simple verbs and nouns. Therefore mutual intelligibility virtually does not exist for these two languages.
I live in Japan. The basic fundamental survival meaning is mutually inteligible. A Japanese in China or reverse can communicate, but no more. 30% of any given Japanese writing uses phonetic symbols not understood by Chinese, But the Chinese will be able to get a gist of the article.--Jondel 09:01, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

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

A little different doesn't make them unreadable. An modern English speaker can still understand Shakespeare.
They are based on Chinese characters from the sixth century. Here's some sixth century English:
Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
-Iopq 18:14, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Although allegedly it'd be easier for a Chinese to read 6th century Chinese, than for instance an Englishman reading Beowulf or an Italian reading Latin. (Btw, I heard Icelanders could read Old Norse fairly well.) 惑乱 分からん 20:16, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
But the Japanese characters from that time are based on the dialect of Chang'an. There are also some later loans as well. Icelandic is very conservative, so it's not a surprise that Icelandic speakers can read Old Norse. -Iopq 23:57, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
The Chang'an article didn't mention anything about how and if the characters looked much different. The criteria here would be if a large number of Japanese characters look clearly different from both Simplified and Traditional Chinese characters. 惑乱 分からん 10:42, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Even the most basic phrases should be uncomprehensible to Japanese speakers. Some characters might be familiar enough to reconstruct a phrase guessing what it means, but come on, 大丈夫 means "all right" in Japanese and "big husband" in Chinese. -Iopq 11:42, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
That might be an exception, though. In this example, I think the Japanese word took on a figurative meaning, based on the notion that it was alright to have a big, strong husband in the house. Of course this example is basically unintelligible, but I'm not sure how common such examples are (when one or both of the language has shifted the meaning of characters notably). 惑乱 分からん 11:54, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Chinese characters were often used to write Japanese words using only their pronunciation. In that case, the result is also incomprehensible to Chinese language speakers. There's also a handful of kanji that were invented in Japan. But, if anything, it would be easier for an educated Japanese person to understand some written Chinese by recognising some radicals of characters that are not in Japanese. But without knowledge of kana it would be impossible for a Chinese person to read Japanese because he wouldn't even know the difference between a positive and a negative sentence. As far as a Japanese person understanding a Chinese text, it is very dependent on the text itself. But most Japanese can't even translate "See you next time" or something simple like that correctly. -Iopq 02:06, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Possibly some common nouns, adjectives, verbs and such could be recognized, but conjunctions and characters used similarly for grammatical functions would be much harder (?)... 惑乱 分からん 02:22, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, you would have to rely mostly on singular characters or try to figure out the meaning of the compounds. Then again, knowing the actual history of the characters would help in this. There's also the problem of Chinese grammar, because it is very different from Japanese grammar. So long sentences would be pretty much uncomprehensible because the word order is different in Chinese, and it has grammatical particles and helping verbs that just don't fit into Japanese grammar. -Iopq 09:21, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Flavors of English

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

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

I removed the line from that section because I am sure most people would agree these variations of English are completely mutually intelligible. As a British English speaker, I have no difficulty whatsoever understanding Americans, Australians or Indians speaking English. I considered moving the line to mutually intelligible languages, but didn't think that was right either, because they're just regional variations of the same language rather than separate languages. I realise the divisions are arbitrary (I believe Norwegian was considered a regional variation of Swedish before the countries separated), but I thought these four dialects really fell outside the scope of the article. Worldtraveller 13:58, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I do not think Norwegian has ever been considered a regional variant of Swedish. Jørgen 21:49, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Anyone who thinks English in Britain, Australia and the USA are in any way mutually unintelligible...well, no comment. The differences are so inconsequential as to barely qualify as dialects of the same language. I've never had any trouble, as an American, communicating with anyone from those countries or in reading texts originiating from them. I can't speak with as much certainty on India, but I do know I can go to an Indian English website right now and read it with no problems whatsoever.user:Jsc1973

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

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

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

[edit] Chabacano is m.i. with Spanish

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

[edit] "Related Languages..." section

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

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

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

[edit] Russian and Polish

are m.i.languages? From the article:

  • Russian, Belarussian, and Ukrainian
  • Ukrainian and Polish

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

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

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


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

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

Belarusian is very close to both Russian and Ukrainian and is mutually intelligible with both. In fact I could take most Ukrainian words, and imagine what they would be in Belarusian. It shares more vocabulary with Ukrainian, but has a more Russian-like pronunciation. Bulgarian is very far in terms of grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary from all of these. It's the LEAST mutually understandable language along with Macedonian for East Slavic speakers. -Iopq 14:44, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
For example I took the Ukrainian word rozumity and then I knew that the i is the reflex of yat, so the reflex in Belarusian would be e, the -ty ending in Russian is -t' so in Belarusian it's -ts' (-c') and akanye would make the first vowel an a. Therefore I get razumec' in Belarusian. Then I checked an online dictionary and found the word РАЗУМЕЦЬ which is the same as I suspected it would be. I can pretty much convert to Belarusian in real time, although it would create some fake words ;) -Iopq 14:55, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Portuguese ~ Catalan?

Are these two really mutually intelligable? Benji man

Could a native speaker please comment. If not delete.--Jondel 00:15, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'm brazilian and just tried to read something in the Catalan Wikipedia, I understood it, bot nothing more than this... --201.34.91.202 18:03, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm a native Catalan speaker and reading Portuguese is perfectly possible to me... undestanding it when spoken is not as direct. When you hear it, you feel you ought to understand it (it does have the same soft accent as Oriental Catalan -i.e. that of Barcelona and the Balearic Islands-) but then, when trying to make out what they're actually saying it's sometimes not as clear. However, I'd definetely say that Catalan speaking people understand Portuguese way more than Spanish people do, because Spanish underwent many changes that other Romanic languages did not (e--->ie in Spanish, o--->ue, etc...). For example, when swearing, "merda" is written (and sounds!) exactly the same in Catalan and Portuguese. Or, in a less scatological context: "port" (Cat.), "porto" (Por.) vs. "puerto" (Spa.)... Finally, I'll add that the reason that Portuguese is to such a degree intelligible with Catalan must be credited, at least in part, to the fact that nearly all native Catalan speakers can also speak Spanish (or are highly familiar with this language). That means that while being spoken to in Portuguese, they will mentally scroll through Catalan and Spanish possible equivalents to the words they're hearing, and restore to the most likely candidate effortlessly (and unconciously). My guess is that for an exclusively Catalan speaking person, the list of intelligibility would be (from possible to impossible): Occitan (not much effort), Italian/Portuguese (quite difficult), Spanish (weird sounds!), French (occasional understanding. Higher when read) and finally Romanian (it would be a constant: "what?"). The table mentions Friulian as well... I've never had the occasion of hearing anyone speak it. I once listened to a radion station in Romansh and did sound familiar, but it wasn't "directly" understandable. Well, congratulations dear reader: made it to the end (sorry for the long paragraph).--80.58.35.170 01:34, 6 December 2005 (UTC) ca:Usuari:Jahecaigut
I believe the phonology of Catalan is somewhat similar to European Portuguese, which helps to explain why Catalans perhaps understand Portuguese better than the Spaniards. Catalan vocabulary and grammar (similar to Occitan and some northern Italian dialects) are however quite different from Portuguese or Spanish for that matter, which makes mutual intelligibility difficult. As an educated speaker of Portuguese with knowledge of Spanish and French, I can generally read Catalan without major difficulty, but understanding the spoken language is not so easy. Nevertheless, I believe I still understand Catalan better than Italian. 161.24.19.82 20:29, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

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


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

[edit] Sardinian ~ Italian

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

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

[edit] Sicilian ~ Italian

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

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

[edit] Italian ~ Romanian

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

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

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

[edit] French ~ Occitan

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

[edit] Cornish, Welsh and Breton

Dear Dr C,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours sincerely

(Professor) N W.


To Professor W, University Tutor in Celtic Languages

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

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

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

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

[edit] More examples?

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

  • Finnish and Estonian
  • Icelandic and Faroese

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

Jørgen 21:41, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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

As a Swedish speaker who studies with two Norwegians and (previously) two Danes, I can throw a little light on this. One of the Norwegians comes from Oslo and speaks bokmål, while the other comes from Rogaland and speaks South-West dialect. The one from Oslo is easier to understand than the one from Rogaland, but I would say that the one from Rogaland is (usually) intelligable. It's easier to understand her talking face-to-face than on the phone.
Danish is intelligable to varying degrees depending on how clear the speaker is. To Swedish ears, Danish is often spoken very unclearly (regional dialects and accents don't help - one of the Danes comes from Fyn). However, it is easier to understand if the speaker is clearer: like the other Dane, who has parents who speak different dialects and so grew up speaking dialectless Danish. Nevertheless Danish is, broadly speaking, also intelligable. Tamino 18:58, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Is Faroese at all intelligible with any other scandinavian language?

[edit] Standardization

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

[edit] Degree of intelligibility

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

That's an intriguing idea, but I don't think such figures already exist, and the "No original research" policy would prevent us from coming up with our own. Ruakh 13:03, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
Forgot about the no original research policy moentarily--thanks for pointing that out!. (Nonetheless, any linguist who wanted suggestions for research could certainly pick this topic, with great fruit and interest for many!) ~ Dpr 23:02, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Artificial Languages

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] No more lists

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

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

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

This section has a purpose, since a) we are writing for the broadest possible audience and b) since the indicidence of mutually intelligibility does not always follow the intuitively predictable pattern--so it is useful to understand which related language are and are not mutually intelligible. --Dpr 22:41, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
I feel this section is for languages that are supposed to be or generally assumed to be mutually intelligible but not.--Jondel 01:29, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
"Generally assumed" sounds very unverifiable to me. It's pretty unencyclopedic to write articles that list misconceptions, common or not, next to proper facts, and it's not making the article any easier to understand.
Peter Isotalo 21:03, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Romanian ~ Aromanian

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] Cham

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

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

[edit] Balti and Tibetan?

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

[edit] Slovene and West Slavic languages

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

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

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

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

[edit] French, Walloon, Romansh, and Occitan

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

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

[edit] Make it an article, not a list

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

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

[edit] Latvian and Lithuanian

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

[edit] Arabic

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

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

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


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

If so, you have to explain me how I spent the last weekend with a tunisan, an algerian and a syrian friend and how we were communucating, each in his own dialect. The definition of mutually intelligible, as said in this page is "a property exhibited by a set of languages when speakers of any one of them can readily understand all the others without intentional study or extraordinary effort". I can assure you that, if written, I can understand any arabic dialect. The big difference between dialects is the procnonciation not the dialect it self (grammar, vocabulary). Hedi0058 (talk) 22:47, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

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

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

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

[edit] Contradiction - Estonian and Finnish

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

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

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

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

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


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

Oh, I wasn't questioning the intelligibility, I was questioning the contradiction in the article. Peter1968 13:00, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Since the Estonian entry, listed in Finno-Ugric sub-topic is not mutually intelligible with the rest of the list, it is superfluous unless some verifiable source can show that it belongs in the list. I am strking it from the list and removing the thereby unnecessary comment that follows it. Ste4k 20:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
      • Finnish and Estonian, have almost no mutual intelligibility, although Estonian speakers can understand some Finnish with difficulty. - Must have been written by someone who speaks neither language. In fact, these two share a noteworthy degree of mutual intelligibility, e.g I've never learnt Finnish but am able to watch Finnish TV broadcasts. Nevertheless, these 2 languages differe greatly, compared to Russian-Belarus language distinction. Constanz - Talk 06:55, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

[edit] Mutual and Lexical intelligibility

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] English and Frisian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


[edit] Portuguese is Portuguese, English is English, Spanish is Spanish etc.

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


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

  1. As far as Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is concerned, one must distinguish between: (i) the standard language as taught in schools and used in writing; (ii) the educated colloquial language spoken by the urban middle-class (especially in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo); and (iii) the popular Brazilian vernacular spoken by the majority of the population. The standard written language is indeed very similar to European Portuguese (EP), despite a few obvious differences in spelling, grammar and vocabulary. The educated colloquial language, being a spoken variety, differs in turn from the European norm not only in vocabulary, but, more significantly, in pronunciation. It also shows greater, albeit limited divergence in grammar from the standard written language. The popular vernacular is on the other hand considerably different not only from EP, but also from standard written BP itself. Differences are widespread in all linguistic domains (lexicon, phonology, morphology, and syntax). Nevertheless, EP speakers seem to understand BP without any major problems: Brazilian soap operas for example are never subtitled when shown on Portuguese TV. The opposite is not always true though, i.e. many Brazilians struggle with European Portuguese phonology, vocabulary and grammar to the point that Portuguese TV programs and movies are often dubbed when shown in Brazil.
  2. There are clear differences in pronunciation and vocabulary between Latin American and European Spanish (one can readily tell for example if a TV newscaster comes from Spain or Mexico). Nevertheless, Spanish as an international language is far more homogeneous than, let's say, Portuguese, probably because the standard language is regulated by a central authority (the Madrid-based RAE) and because the European Castilian dialect still represents the model for "proper speech" in most of Latin America. The only major exception I can think of is Rioplatense Spanish, which seems to deviate more significantly from international Spanish.
  3. British and American English (respectively BrE and AmE) differ considerably in pronunciation and vocabulary (more so than European and Latin American Spanish and in a scale comparable to the differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese). The two varieties of English also differ to a lesser extent in spelling and grammar, but differences in that respect are not as broad as in the case of European and Brazilian Portuguese. Certain dialects/sociolects of American English (like African-American vernacular English or even some uneducated varieties of Southern American English) show however greater deviation from the standard language, sometimes in a scale compare to the divergence between standard Portuguese and the popular Brazilian vernacular. Brazil and the U.S. are nonetheless similar in the sense that, in both countries, the corresponding European standards (respectively of Portuguese and English) are not seen as models to be emulated in the same way European Spanish is seen in most of Latin America (with the possible exception of Argentina).
  4. Spoken Québécois French and, even more so, Acadian French are quite distinct from standard Parisian French (not so much in grammar, but mostly in lexicon and phonology) to the point that Parisian speakers may find them unintelligible. However, unlike Brazilian Portuguese and American English, Canadian French lacks a written standard of its own and the (relatively small) community of 7 million or so Canadian francophones (compared to over 60 million native speakers of French in Europe) has a neglible influence on "international French" as taught as a second language in non-francophone countries. It is also worth noticing that news anchors on Radio Canada often modify their Québec accent to sound like international French. As a result, Québec newscasts are never subtitled on international French-language television (like