Mutual intelligibility
Introduction
It usually requires considerable time and effort to learn or understand a new language. However, many languages are similar in their grammar and vocabulary to other related languages. Speakers of these languages find it relatively easy to read or to understand the related language or languages. However, the intelligibility among languages can vary from individuals, according to their knowledge of their own tongue, their interests on other cultures, their broadmindedness and other factors.
Definition
A pair of languages is said to be mutually intelligible if speakers of one language can readily understand the other language. A group of languages is said to be mutually intelligible if all the language-pairs in the group are mutually intelligible.
List of Mutually Intelligible Languages
- Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish.
- Spoken Hindi and spoken Urdu
- Written Mandarin and written Cantonese (but not if the vernacular is written)
- Punjabi, Seraiki, and Hindko.
- Slovak and Czech.
- Spoken Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian.
- Afrikaans, Dutch-Flemish.
- Finnish (Suomi) and Estonian (Eesti).
- Russian, Belarussian, Ukranian and Bulgarian
- Ukrainian and Polish
- Turkish and Azeri
- Spoken Uzbek and Uygur
- Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia
- Portuguese, Galician, Spanish, Catalan,
Italian and French
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