Talk:Mutual intelligibility

The weird numbers in Russian

Why the hell are there some very ARBITRARY numbers given for Russian? It's based on only one study which cites no reliable sources and the percentages seem highly unlikely, especially when it comes to the written forms of languages (East Slavic and some South Slavic languages are written in the Cyrillic alphabet while all West Slavic languages are written using the Latin one so a person with no exposure to one of these scripts would understand almost nothing). The methodology of this study and the person who wrote the paper are also highly unreliable (the dude, Robert Lindsay, claims that he's an "independent linguist", whatever that means (I think it simply means that he represents "alternative" linguistics which is comparable with alternative medicine)). For example, let's take a look at the following part:

"70% Russian intelligibility of written Polish, and 25% of oral Polish

70% Russian intelligibility of written Czech, and 4% of oral Czech".

How can written Russian be mutually intelligible with written Polish and Czech if they are all written in different scripts? Also, how come is oral Polish more intelligible with Russian if Czech actually borrowed a lot of Russian vocabulary during the national revival to make Czech more Slavic while Polish didn't care much for some stupid, arbitrary purity and kept borrowing words from Latin, French, and German indiscriminately? Also, I know that my opinion probably doesn't matter but as a native Polish speaker, before I started learning Russian, I understood close to nothing of spoken Russian, especially when it was spoken fast. I also had to learn the script from scratch to understand what's written and learn the rules as the Russian Cyrillic alphabet isn't particularly phonemic.

As for the South Slavic group, I can see why it could be a little more intelligible to a Russian speaker with no prior knowledge but only in terms of vocabulary. Certainly not in terms of phonology and especially grammar. The most striking example is Bulgarian and Macedonian which are unintelligible even to other South Slavic languages as the Eastern subbranch of South Slavic developed quite independently from the Western one. Bulgarian and Macedonian are, first of all, part of the Balkan Sprachbund and have been greatly influenced by Greek, Albanian, Romanian and Turkish, especially in their syntax. They are so different from all the other Slavic languages that if not for common vocabulary and phonological features, they could be superficially thought of as belonging to a different Indo-European family IMO. They have lost all of their declensions in nouns and adjectives (except for the vocative case for singular nouns but even this vestigial case seems to be used less and less these days, e.g. borrowed names don't usually have a vocative form) - so they have retained only the nominative as the unmarked case of all nouns and the vocative as a special form of some nouns, which is in sharp contrast to all the other Slavic languages which have 6-7 grammatical cases. Bulgarian is almost like English for that matter as it also marks nominal relationships without changing the noun (i.e. it uses the synthetic construction "preposition + noun in the nominative", just like English or French). Uniquely for Balto-Slavic languages, Bulgarian and Macedonian have also developed articles (the indefinite article being an unmarked noun while the definite one is suffixed to the noun), with Macedonian taking it further and having three different degrees of proximity to the speaker. In contrast to these innovations, they are visibly more conservative than the other Slavic languages in their verbal conjugations as they have retained such tenses/aspects as the aorist, imperfect etc. Even more than that, they have developed verbal particles indicating "witness moods" (in other words, they have more grammatical moods than an average Indo-European language). This makes Bulgarian and Macedonian almost completely unintelligible to other Slavic speakers.

Both South and West Slavic groups have some kind of fixed stress patterns (Polish on the penultimate syllable, Czech and Slovak on the first, Macedonian interestingly on the ante-penultimate). This is completely different from Russian which has flexible stress, resulting in vowel reduction (I admit that this feature makes Russian very hard for me to understand at times).

I suggest that we either find a better study that would focus mostly on the similarities between Russian and other East Slavic languages (d'uh), or at least remove the South and West branches from this comparison with Russian. Shumkichi (talk) 16:46, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Have removed, the source isn't reliable. – Thjarkur (talk) 10:16, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

How is the language's purity stupid and arbitrary to you? Given the fact that you're Polish (like me) makes me even more sad to read your opinion. You certainly see no problem with polluting the language with loanwords and thus making Polish less Slavic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gość232 (talk • contribs) 16:26, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

One study concluded that when concerning written language

That's not proper English. Possible are:

One study concluded that when considering written language,

and

One study concluded that, concerning written language,

2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:A9F5:84:8E1F:3489 (talk) 15:02, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Dutch people are more exposed to German than vice versa

Well, German is taught in Dutch secondary schools, but not the other way around! So, in theory, most Dutch people should have been exposed to at least two years of high-school German. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:A9F5:84:8E1F:3489 (talk) 15:08, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Bengali & Assamese

See [1], at least Chittagonian, sylheti are easily the same I think a lot if these languages are also mutually intelligible. --Greatder (talk) 14:57, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Sign languages

The article should include a section about mutual intelligibility of different sign languages. From what I understand, most sign languages are not mutually intelligibility, even if the spoken languages are. (i.e. British sign language and American sign language are different.). --217.149.171.189 (talk) 21:53, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Sundayclose (talk) 00:08, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

I dont want a specific change to be made, it was just a suggestion for someone more knowledgeable to take care of. --217.149.171.189 (talk) 00:17, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Take care of what? If you want something done to the article, you need to provide reliable sources. Sundayclose (talk) 14:36, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

I just wanted to point out that this article doesn't mention sign langauges at all and that some info about them should maybe be added by someone who is able to do so. I'm not in a position to add anything myself since I don't have any knowledge about the subject. --217.149.171.189 (talk) 03:12, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

That's fine, but without a source it's unlikely to happen. This article does not have a lot of traffic. People are more likely to add something if a source is provided. Sundayclose (talk) 16:56, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

217... Thanks for your suggestion, which is a perfectly reasonable one. If someone with knowledge of the topic comes along, s/he'll know sources. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 20:23, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Same comment: it should be done as soon as someone with adequate knowledge appears. Perhaps 217 could ask for help in Talk:Sign language, for instance. --Jotamar (talk) 18:35, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

It isn't necessary to keep the tag up for this reason. This talk section is sufficient to alert editors that the article can potentially be improved in this regard. —Alalch E. 11:43, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Should we add Luxembourgish, Low German and Sorbian?

Is it within the scope of this article to add smaller languages like Luxembourgish, or languages without nationwide prominence like Low German and Sorbian? Luxembourgish might have significant mutual intelligibility with Standard German and partial with Dutch. Low German would have a significant mutual intelligibility with Dutch and maybe Standard German too. Sorbian might have mutual intelligibility with Polish, Czech and Slovak. 77.248.154.112 (talk) 17:26, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Certainly, but not without appropriate references. —Alalch E. 08:41, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Good question, not easy to come up with an answer for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps first on the list is that with thousands of languages to deal with potentially, which families does it make sense to choose to examine in detail -- Paman family of Australia? Germanic? Southern Athabascan? Possibilities could be narrowed down by limiting the choices to only those for which mutual intelligibility has been studied empirically, a requirement that would at least require good sourcing now missing for. e.g., the divisions of the Romance listing, valid to some extent as a very rough sort of overall typology, but suspect in some points re mutual intelligibility. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 16:12, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

others have suggested that these objections are misguided, as they collapse different concepts of what constitutes a "language"

The more serious the reader, the more helpful it would be to have this statement fleshed out. As is it's not very helpful, raises questions rather than answering them. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 00:28, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, it would be helpful to flesh out this part. -Vipz (talk) 03:48, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Unnecessary lists

Does this article really need the 3 different lists of mutually intelligible languages? They are poorly sourced and formatted and they contribute minimally to this article. This article needs no more than a few examples of mutual intelligibility, not 3 lists of them. These lists should be split off into a new article or just deleted. – Treetoes023 (talk) 15:31, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Also, the strange format A: B, C, ... seems incompatible with the "mutual" part, as does the "asymmetrically" qualification on many of them. It looks like a coatrack for people who want to argue that X is/isn't part of language Y. Deleting them all seems reasonable. Kanguole 15:45, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

You both raise good points, but I don't see a set of solutions. Though the Spoken forms mainly list jumps the rails by concentrating on scripts rather than actual language, most readers won't stop to think "Hold on. Even my native language written in a script mysterious to me would be incomprehensible". Fuller sourcing would be good, but it's hard to come by, as there's not much to draw from, and the quality can be iffy (and then there are observations which, though not false, are open to quite a bit of controversy, such as "It [MI] is used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects".) Asymmetrical comprehension between A and B is normal and frequent, even if it can be abused and misused in discussions of (and no small amount of heated bickering about) language/dialect. In sum, improve by refining what's in the article? Sure. Delete information that at worst is not untrue? Hard to conceive of that as improvement. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 16:54, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

@Barefoot through the chollas: I don't know, I just don't see a reason to keep them. The lists don't really contribute to the article and the argument of not removing them because they're already here isn't a good enough reason in my eyes. – Treetoes023 (talk) 18:34, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I hear you. And/but I don't see a reason not to keep them. I agree that the argument to not remove because they're already there holds no water whatsoever. The argument not to remove because they provide information, IMO, does. Whether they do or do not contribute to what a reader might expect of the article or find informative is an open question, variable by reader, as you and I seem to instantiate pretty clearly: you think they don't belong, I find them informative -- in principle, assuming the information is accurate. Seems to me much more helpful to readers to focus on that point, i.e. refine for accuracy (such as repairing a claim of a uniform language with dialects). Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 18:52, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

@Barefoot through the chollas: They do no doubt provide information (although the quality and accuracy is highly varied), I don't think it's useful information. To me the list is trivial at best. Maybe it could be split off into a separate article where the information can continue to be improved there? To be honest I don't really think the information belongs in list form in the first place, the format is confusing and makes it so repeats are necessary. – Treetoes023 (talk) 19:28, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

It seems we just have different perspectives on various aspects of the article, what's of interest and what isn't, how to format the presentation, etc. I'm not going to spend all that much time on this article, but the time I do spend I'd like to be dedicated to improving the content, not removing content. (One person's trivia can be another person's Fascinating Fact.) A real content complaint is the exclusion of so many languages. One of the first lacunae I noticed was Apachean: Navajo - Mescalero, etc. Odd. The degree of MI can be very important historically for those two and their neighbors. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 21:25, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't understand why this content would need to be removed as opposed to worked on so can it be improved. If something isn't adequately supported by a reference it should be removed. —Alalch E. 22:00, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

The material about written forms is off-topic and should go. So are "List of languages sometimes considered varieties" and "List of dialects or varieties sometimes considered separate languages" – there is better coverage of those topics in Dialect#Examples.

The format "A: B, C" should be changed to "A, B and C", because the topic is mutual intelligibility. For the same reason, any entries with "asymmetrically" (usually between a major national language and a less-widespread one) are off-topic and should go.

Sometimes an article can be improved by trimming listcruft, and this is a prime example. Kanguole 22:03, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I disagree about removing any sections. For example, the content in Mutual intelligibility#South Slavic is not the same content as in Mutual intelligibility#List of dialects or varieties sometimes considered separate languages when Serbo-Croatian is talked about again. Please take a second look and you will see that these two portions of the article talk about different things. —Alalch E. 22:07, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

And definitely not remove entries merely because the the mutual intelligibility is asymmetrical. Mutual in this context by no means necessarily implies absolute reciprocal equality. Just as intelligibility can be gradient (not binary yes/no) depending on the languages involved, it also can be variable in direction. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 00:06, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

The criterion should be whether the source says they're mutually intelligible. Kanguole 16:54, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Of course. And, if the detail is available, to what extent, if more or less reciprocal in degree or asymmetrical, etc. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 17:48, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

"dialects of a uniform Zunda language"?

What is "uniform" intended to mean in the statement "Zulu [...] the first three are often considered to be dialects of a uniform Zunda language? In four decades+ of doing Linguistics, I don't believe I've ever encountered a uniform language -- certainly not one consisting of identifiable dialects. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 18:27, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

@Barefoot through the chollas: Yeah, I have no idea what it means either. I checked out the reference and it doesn't even mention the Zunda language, let alone a "uniform" one. – Treetoes023 (talk) 18:45, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

I've deleted the claim. Perhaps someone with secure knowledge of the situation can chime in with something coherent. Doesn't seem necessary for this article, though. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 19:05, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

"It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects"

Assuming -- huge assumption -- that cogent sense can be made of a distinction language/dialect, is the "important criterion for distinguishing" claim really true? A few reputable references are very much needed here. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 16:04, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

"Almost all linguists use mutual intelligibility as the primary linguistic criterion..."

This strong claim, at odds with experience in linguistics and among linguists, needs an actual quotation to identify the source and the exact wording of that source's statement. The point questioned is the assertion almost all linguists, which is at best of -- to euphemize -- very dubious truth value. Much more typical are linguists' observations such as "Spanish and Portuguese are mutually intelligible to a large extent", or, in the same publication, explaining that understanding languages one does not speak (receptive multilingualism) is not abnormal:

The principle of receptive multilingualism is based on the fact that some language pairs are so closely related that the speakers are able to communicate each using their own language without prior language instruction. This strategy is widely used for communication among speakers of the three mainland Scandinavian languages, i.e. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. [...] For example, Danish tourists travelling to Sweden will often speak their mother tongue, Danish, to the Swedes they meet at the camping site or on the street. The Swedes will often react with some hesitation at first, but will often discover that it is possible and even easier to stick to their mother tongue, Swedish, when talking to a Dane.[[2]]

Hock and Joseph's assessment regarding the value of the mutual intelligibility criterion after examining several cases is typical.

What these varying results and failures of the mutual-intelligibility test show is that there is no clear demarcation between "different dialect" and "different language". Linguistic similarity or difference is a matter not of yes or no, but of more or less. Moreover, mutual intelligibility depends not only on linguistic factors, but also on social ones. (Hock, Hans Henrich and Brian D. Joseph. 1996. Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship. An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. p. 327)

In the real world of working linguists, adoption of mutual intelligibility as the primary linguistic criterion for determining same/different language(s) is at best an outlier, sufficiently flawed as to be employed by few. The Wikipedia article should reflect that reality, not misreport it. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 17:24, 7 August 2024 (UTC)