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In linguistics, mutual intelligibility 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. It is sometimes used as one criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, though sociolinguistic factors are also important.
Intelligibility between languages can be asymmetric, with speakers of one understanding more of the other than speakers of the other understand of the first. It is when it is relatively symmetric that it is characterized as 'mutual'. It exists in differing degrees among many related or geographically proximate languages of the world, often in the context of a dialect continuum.
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Intelligibility
For individuals to achieve moderate proficiency or understanding in a language (called L2) other than their mother tongue or first language (L1) typically requires considerable time and effort through study and/or practical application. However, for those many groups of languages displaying mutual intelligibility, namely, those, usually genetically related languages, similar to each other in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, or other features, speakers of one language usually find it relatively easy to achieve some degree of understanding in the related language(s). Languages mutually intelligible but not genetically related may be creoles and parent languages, or geographically adjacent variants of two unrelated languages.
However, intelligibility among languages can vary between individuals or groups within a language population, according to their knowledge of various registers and vocabulary in their own language, their interest in or familiarity with other cultures, psycho-cognitive traits, and other factors.
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Asymmetry
Asymmetries often exist in intelligibility between languages. For example, many Spanish speakers report substantially greater difficulty in attempting to understand Portuguese in spoken form than vice versa. Similarly, many Icelandic speakers understand Swedish much more easily than the other way round, because Icelandic has preserved several archaic features of Scandinavian languages that the others have lost.
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Mutually intelligible languages or variants of one language?
According to some definitions, two or more languages that demonstrate a sufficiently high degree of mutual intelligibility should properly not be considered two distinct languages but, in fact, multiple variants of the same language. Conversely, it is sometimes the case that different varieties of what is considered the same language—according to popular belief, governmental stance, or historical convention—are not, in fact, mutually intelligible in practice. (For more on this, see Dialect, and Dialect continuum—as well as Diasystem and Diglossia for two closely related but distinct language forms.)
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Selected list of mutually intelligible languages
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Indo-European
Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. The three are considered to compose 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 Scandinavian languages for more on this debate; see also Differences between Norwegian Bokmål and Standard Danish.)
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; however, Czech and Slovak speakers do not usually need any assistance to fluently communicate; Czech and Slovak were sometimes in the past classified together as Czechoslovakian though this is not held to be linguistically accurate)
Possibly all Slavic languages are mutually intelligible up to a small degree in spoken and/or written form.
Occitan and northern Italian dialects
Romanian and Italian show a limited degree of asymmetrical mutual intelligibility: speakers of Romanian seem to understand Italian more easily than the other way round.
Romanian and Moldovan, which are actually the same language differentiated due to geo-political history.
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Austronesian
There is a degree of mutual intelligibility among some of the Polynesian languages. For example, when James Cook visited New Zealand in the late 18th century, he was able to communicate with Māori people through a Tahitian chief named Tupaea who was travelling with him. Generally, Tupaea and the Māori were able to understand each other fairly well, but on some occasions even Tupaea was baffled.
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Dravidian
Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada (These languages belong to the subgroup of Southern Dravidian. The only other major Dravidian language is Telugu, but it comes under Central Dravidian subgroup and is heavily Sanskritized. Please note that though Malayalam is also heavily sanskritized (mostly in formal vocabulary and excluding grammatical words such as pronouns, although it has also been influenced byaspects of Sanskrit grammar such as Sandhi rules), it retains many Dravidian roots, especially in colloquial forms. Even though Telugu is largely unintelligible to speakers of South Dravidian languages, some relationship is still obvious - for example, "Rama kicked the ball" would be "rāmudu bantini koṭṭaḍu" in Telugu, whereas in Malayalam it would be "rāman pantine koṭṭi" (the verbs in the phrase are there because they are cognate with each other, beginning with "koṭṭ-" in both cases, but koṭṭi has developed a slightly different connotation in Malayalam and "taṭṭi" would normally be used instead).
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Sino-Tibetan
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Tai-Kadai
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Turkic
Oghuz Turkic
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Finno-Ugric
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Bantu
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Afro-Asiatic
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Constructed Languages
Esperanto and Ido are to a small degree mutually intelligible.
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Spoken form only
Bengali, Oriya and Assamese in the standard spoken forms. Not all dialects may be mutually intelligible.
Slavic languages - most neighboring languages are mutually intelligible
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.
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Written form only
Written Chinese can be read to some degree by Koreans familiar with hanja, the old style of Korean writing using Chinese characters.
Written Chinese can usually be read to a limited degree by those proficient in Japanese; the reverse can be true to a lesser extent although the wide use of phonetical characters (kana) in written Japanese hinder this.
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.
Native Portuguese speakers usually read Spanish seamlessly, with the help of a dictionary for less common words or words derived from archaic (for Portuguese) root forms. The same is not quite true on the other way around.
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Sign languages
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Indo-European
Swedish-, Norwegian-, and Danish-speakers have difficulty understanding Icelandic.
Romanian is not mutually intelligible with Spanish, Portuguese or French.
Slavic languages are related and to various degrees mutually intelligible. Asymmetrical mutual intelligibility exists between Bulgarian and Macedonian on one hand and the other Slavic languages on the other. This is because Bulgarian and Macedonian have distinctly different grammar. Bulgarian speakers understand other Slavs easier than the other way round.
Russian and Polish are largely not mutually intelligible although Ukrainian is mutually intelligible to some degree to both, being believed by many to be an intermediary form in the dialect continuum.
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Other language groups
Many spoken dialects of Chinese are not mutually intelligible, such as spoken Mandarin and spoken Cantonese.
Languages in the Finno-Ugric family including Hungarian, Finnish or Estonian are not mutually intelligible to any extent. Some have reported that Estonian speakers can understand some Finnish with difficulty.
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Selected list of mutually intelligible languages now extinct
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See also
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