Mutual intelligibility
Mutual intelligibility or English mutual intelligibility is in general linguistics, a property that can be found in a number of language pairs. Mutual intelligibility is when speakers of different languages can understand each other without special training. Sometimes mutual intelligibility is used as a criterion when it comes to the definition of languages and dialects. However, there are also socio- linguistic factors that affect mutual intelligibility.
Concept
The term was introduced in 1926 by the American linguist Leonard Bloomfield in the scientific discourse to create a purely mechanistic -based speech analysis concept, regardless of historical, political, religious or nationalistic embossed graduations. In contrast to classical categorizations, it can happen that a commonly respected as a dialect of a language idiom is less mutually intelligible, as a related but recognized as an independent literary language language form. For example, Dutch and Low German are mutually partially intelligible, so what is not true for the language pair Low German and standard German. Nevertheless, Low German is regarded as German dialect and not as Dutch. A similar purely based on synchronous analysis approach is formulated by Heinz Kloss concept of linguistic distance.
However, distinction is made between oral and written mutual intelligibility. The mutual intelligibility of languages can also be asymmetric, so that a speaker understands more of what his counterpart speaks as those from the other understands. Under symmetric intelligibility therefore means equivalent mutual intelligibility. There are often allied or geographically close languages varying degrees of mutual intelligibility, often in the context of a dialect continuum.
Examples
Written and oral forms
Some closely related languages that use a similar Verschriftlichungsmodell, both orally and in writing "mutually intelligible ". The encounter include the following examples:
- Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian ( when the latter is written in Latin script)
- Bulgarian, Macedonian and Torlakisch ( when the latter is written in Cyrillic script )
- Czech and Slovak
- Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian
- Dutch and Afrikaans
- German (especially Moselle Franconian ) and Luxembourgish
- Danish, Swedish and Norwegian ( Bokmål especially here )
- Icelandic, Faroese and Norwegian ( Nynorsk especially here )
- Galician and Portuguese
- Galician and Spanish
- Turkish and Azeri ( when the latter is written in Latin script)
- Thai and Laotian
- Bahasa Malayu and Bahasa Indonesia
Oral forms
Some languages , however, are more or less mutually intelligible, while they use different writing Kodifizierungsmodelle in its spoken form. So about English for German speaking people who have never learned this language in its spoken form easier to understand than writing. Other examples include:
Written forms
This contrasts with languages that are easily mutually intelligible in its written form, while the agreement in its spoken form has major problems. This applies, among other things:
- German and Dutch
- Spanish and Portuguese
- Spanish and Catalan
- Estonian and Finnish
- Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Taiwanese, etc (all Chinese languages)
Asymmetrical forms
- Portuguese speakers understand Spanish usually better than vice versa, because they use a Spanish Verschriftlichungsmodell similar, however, the Portuguese pronunciation of the same prepared for Spanish speakers problems.
- Swiss and Austrians understand German usually better than vice versa, as they learn alongside their dialect and standard German and by the consumption of German media have also passive language skills in other German dialects.
- Lithuanians Latvians understand better than vice versa, since the Lithuanian language and archaic form richer than Latvia.