Mutually intelligible languages: Encyclopedia II - Mutually intelligible languages - Selected list of mutually intelligible languages

Mutually intelligible languages - Selected list of mutually intelligible languages

Mutually intelligible languages - Written and spoken forms

• Germanic
  • Afrikaans, Dutch,and Low German (Plattdutsch).In some places a dialect continuum still exists between Low German (in Germany) and Dutch (in the Netherlands).
  • German, Yiddish and Luxembourgish all rooted in mainly German vocabulary
  • Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. The three are considered to comprise the Mainland Scandinavian group. Written Danish and the Bokmål form of Norwegian are particularly close, though the phonology and prosody of all three languages differ somewhat. Proficient speakers of any of the three languages can understand the others, though studies have shown that speakers of Norwegian generally understand both Danish and Swedish far better than Swedes or Danes understand any of the other languages. See also Scandinavia#Languages.
  • English and Lowland Scots ("Doric")
• Slavic
  • Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn and Ukrainian - the East Slavic branch
  • Bulgarian and Macedonian - the eastern group of the South Slavic branch
  • Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian (also previously classified as one language, Serbo-Croatian) in the western group of the South Slavic branch. There is a dialect continuum with Slovenian in the West, and Macedonian and Bulgarian in the South and East.
  • Polish, Slovak, Czech, and Sorbian ethnically and politically close - all of them of the West Slavic branch (note: no combination of these languages is truly fully mutually intelligible, especially not all dialects)

• Romance
  • Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian
  • Catalan, Occitan, self-defined as separate languages only since 1934, and Friulian
  • French, Walloon, Romansh, and Occitan
  • French and its Norman-descended cousins the Channel Island languages of Sercquiais (Sarkese), Dgèrnésiais, and Jèrriais
  • Italian (Standard) and various regional languages/dialects of Italy
    • Sicilian and Italian (Sicilian has no official recognition as a separate language)
    • Sardinian and Italian
  • Occitan and northern Italian dialects
  • Portuguese, Galician to a large degree with Spanish.
  • Portuguese and Galician self-defined as separate languages. Portuguese evolved out of Galician (Gallego).
  • Portuguese, Spanish, Italian are to some degree mutually intelligible.

Note: of the three, Spanish and Italian are the most mutually intelligible when spoken, since the differences in pronounciation between Portuguese and the other two are too great. In their written forms however, all three languages are generally highly mutually intelligible.

• • Romanian and Moldovan, which are actually the same language differentiated due to political reasons.
  • Romanian and Aromanian

• Indo-Iranian
  • Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, Seraiki, and Hindko.

• Samoan and Tongan
• Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia (linguistically two slightly different variants of the same language, distinguished for political-cultural reasons). See also Differences between Malay and Indonesian.

• Thai, Shan and Laotian
  • Laotian and the Isan Thai language. The two are extremely similar and may in fact be variants of one language.
• Zhuang and Bouyei

Oghuz Turkic

• Turkish and Azerbaijani
  • Qashqai and Khalaj: closely related to Azerbaijani
• Turkmen, Crimean Tatar, and Salar

• Meänkieli and Finnish

• Zulu and Xhosa
• Bukusu and Masaaba

• many Berber variants, especially Northern Berber variants (sometimes known collectively as Tamazight)

Mutually intelligible languages - Spoken form only

• Uzbek and Uyghur
• Indo-European
  • Tajik and Persian (including Dari)
  • Bukhori (Judeo-Bukhari-Persian) and Tajik
  • Hindi and Urdu (see also Hindustani language)
  • Slavic languages - most neighboring languages are mutually intelligible
    • Belarusian and Ukrainian with Polish
    • Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Slovenian. see Serbo-Croatian language
    • Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian, and Polish show a limited degree of asymmetrical mutual intelligibility: speakers of these languages seem to understand Polish more easily than the other way round.

Mutually intelligible languages - Written form only

• All "dialects" (varieties) under the Han Language of Chinese, for example, Mandarin and Cantonese. However, this is not the case if vernacularisms or direct representations of the spoken dialect are used.
• Speakers of any modern Chinese dialects have little difficulty in reading post-Warring States classical Chinese literature usually upon completion of Secondary education.
• Written Chinese can usually be read to a limited degree by those proficient in Japanese; the reverse can be true to a lesser extent however the wide use of phonetical characters in Japanese hinder this.
• Those proficient in Icelandic can read Old Norse with little difficulty.
• College-educated speakers of Modern Greek can read Classical Greek with little difficulty.
• Modern Hebrew speakers can generally read Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew with little difficulty.
• Scottish Gaelic and Irish, sister variants of the Goidelic Celtic branch
• Italian and French are intelligible to a small degree when in written form, although speakers of Italian usually find it easier to understand written French than the opposite.
• South Indian/Dravidian languages Telugu and Kannada.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Selected list of mutually intelligible languages", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki