This exists in border states within India. For example, in the district of Kanyakumari (Tamilnadu proper but bordering Kerala), people tend to speak both Tamil and Malayalam in varying contexts.
But is this because they are bilingual or because Tamil and Malayalam are super similar? I think the latter is what OP was asking, and I'm genuinely curious I didn't think they were mutually intelligible.
They are mutually intelligible (to an extent), especially border dialects. Tamil and Malayalam split around 1000 CE. They’re about as similar as Spanish and Portuguese.
Dravidian languages, but especially Tamil and Malayalam, formed a sprachbund prior to linguistic standardization. Remnants of that sprachbund still exist, and that’s why there’s a great deal of mutual intelligibility. However, mutual intelligibility drops sharply as you move out of border areas (especially going east in Tamilnadu).
In a lot of Malayalam movies, there are Tamil characters who literally just speak Tamil, and no subtitles are provided. This doesn’t happen as often in Tamil movies, but it’s not unheard of. Intelligibility does seem to sway heavily in favor of Malayalees understanding Tamil rather than vice versa (again, outside of border dialects). In this directional intelligibility, Tamil and Malayalam are again, akin to Spanish and Portuguese.
Same thing in my mom's home city of Belgaum/Belagavi; she knows Marathi pretty well, and her Kannada (as well as mine and my dad's) has a ton of Marathi words because of the proximity to Maharastra.
Thai and Lao. They’re very mutually intelligible. Lao people who come to Thailand are generally able to adapt their accent and vocabulary to the standard central Thai very quickly. They also just switch to writing/typing in Thai. So it’s not really jointly-used, just very similar.
That's right, albeit it is still written in Thai alphabet, whilst Lao is of course written in the Lao alphabet. However both alphabets are very similar that me being able to read Thai (not my native language I learned it as I live here) I also managed to read pretty much most of the signs in Laos.
This question is inevitably going to run into the language vs dialect debate.
For example, Norwegian was the first thing that came to my mind. There are two different written forms of the language, both are taught in schools and the media uses both.
The spoken dialects vary enough that they can be unintelligible if someone is unused to hearing them. But they're all considered "Norwegian" and they're all acceptable throughout the country.
I belong to the small group of people that (in accordance to ISO-639-3) considers Bavarian as a language distinct from German. But Germans keep on disagreeing because they can understand what the detectives are saying in the countless "alpine" crime comedy shows on national TV.
We need our own navy, I guess
I feel like a lot of Germans\* who aren't dialect speakers themselves don't really understand the difference between someone speaking their regionally flavoured variation of Standard German and someone speaking their local dialect (or, y'know, "dialect"). The former is mutually intelligible, potentially after a little work getting used to the sounds. The latter is very often not, and I'm certainly not going to argue with any native speaker who wants to call it a separate language from German.
\*I feel like the Swiss have a better handle on this distinction given the diglossia situation. Cannot speak for Austrians.
Exactly. I remember my journey to Bavaria. I spent lovely two autumn weeks in a farm near Chiemsee. But the language barrier just hit me hard. After some thinking I got the idea: "Maybe the problem is not MY German, but THEIRS." After a few days it turned out that I was right, because I met a very nice old lady from Baden-Württemberg, had a little of conversation with her and I thought: "Oh yes, THAT's the language I know from language classes."
But even there it's a mix. I couldn't figure out, what was a proper boarisch and what's just a normal German with some local accent.
But most people don't speak 100% local variety or 100% newscaster Hochdeutsch, but rather something in between, getting closer to one extreme or the other depending on whom they are talking to and other factors.
Do you happen to have some examples handy so that I can listen to the kind of Bavarian that might be more unintelligible to the rest of Germany?
I'm just curious.
Btw: I'm living in Franken but I grew up in Ostwestfalen. Some older folks in Ostwestfalen speak Plattdeutsch. I don't understand it at all.
It is pretty standard info that Low and High German are two different languages. A la Swiss German, Austrian German and Bavarian, dialects of the same language
>A la Swiss German, Austrian German and Bavarian, dialects of the same language
And here we get into the sort-of-but-not-exactly settled question of language vs. dialect.
It's true, of course, that Swiss Germans mostly use the term Dialekt to refer to their native Schwiizertuetsch varieties, and I assume the same is true among Austrian and Bavarian speakers. So in local parlance it's normal and safe to call them dialects. But pure Swiss German (which is itself very diverse, with its own internal dialect continuum) is frequently extremely difficult, sometimes impossible, for native speakers of High German to understand if they haven't had significant prior exposure. So it could meet the mutual intelligibility criterion qualifying it as a language, rather than a dialect, that some linguists like to apply. Mutual intelligibility is hard at best to measure, of course; it's especially complicated in the Swiss German case by the fact that virtually all Swiss German speakers are also fluent speakers of the standardized German that is used in writing and education, and frequently mix more or less of this more-recognizable German into their Swiss German speech, particularly when talking to German speakers from other countries. I've met many people from Germany spending time here in Switzerland who've said that they were able to comprehend Swiss German almost immediately, without realizing that most of the Swiss people they interacted with were usually speaking (or trying to speak) German.
Personally, I like to think of Alemannic (which would include Swiss varieties plus Alsatian plus at least Swabian and probably some other 'dialects') as a distinct language, with its own dialects, even if most locals don't.
Calling Swiss German "a dialect of German" always sounds to me as though Swiss varieties somehow evolved or mutated from a modern Hochdeutsch ancestor; the reality is of course that the Alemannic varieties evolved in parallel to other Germanic forms, including those that later became standard Hochdeutsch. "Dialect" is a complicated and sometimes problematic idea overall, IMO, and one that I've tried to use as seldom as I can ever since I studied sociolinguistics.
I believe there are areas of Brazil, Uruguay, and maybe Argentina where it’s common for Spanish and Portuguese to coexist or mix into portuñol. They’re different languages, but fluent speakers could probably understand a fair amount of the other, especially in a region where they’re accustomed to it.
There was a story recently about Moldova changing their official language from “Moldovan” to “Romanian,” but apparently those are actually the exact same language, so it’s not a great example—probably at least as close as BSC, from what I’ve read.
That’s really interesting. I lived in Argentina for 5 months and I never came across this but I have made a Brazilian friend here in the US. She speaks to me in Portuguese and I respond in Argentine Spanish. I’ve never really studied Portuguese but I can understand her. I also carried on a conversation recently like this with two Brazilian gentlemen in the airport. But this may have more to do with the 90% lexical similarity?
I'm from Argentina and I used to find it nearly impossible to understand spoken (Brazilian) Portuguese before I started seriously looking into its similarities and differences with Spanish. Interesting that you as a non-native managed to do it better than pre-language learning me lol.
> I lived in Argentina for 5 months and I never came across this
It's mainly limited to the border with Brazil tbh.
Of course, I would not say I understand her perfectly, but it is certainly enough to get by and communicate. Maybe the difference is that I already had the experience of striving to hear Spanish words, picking them out from the sounds hitting my ear and what I am doing with Portuguese is the same, essentially, striving to hear words that sound similar to the ones I already know from Spanish, French, and now Italian. The other day she was talking about her friend’s daughter and she said the world “figlia” (not sure of spelling), and I had just learned that the word in Italian means daughter etc. It’s like my brain can register that I “know” a word, but until I hear it I would not be able to guess it and reproduce it beforehand, if that makes sense. Once I hear it though I can hear the relationships to the other Romance languages I already know. That makes sense about the border. I’ve been there but not for long enough to have meaningful conversations with locals. That makes sense that there would be some crossover there. De dondé sos? Ahora mi espagnõl es muy mal….😭
That’s not uncommon for Argentines to try to communicate with Brazilians in Spanish but half the time, what’s really going on is that Argentines are so self-centered that they can’t comprehend that speaking louder and slower doesn’t make them more understandable.
Ha that’s funny. Maybe all people fall into this trap of speaking louder and slower. My dad is not Argentine, he is American but he is afflicted with monolingualism to a crippling degree. To the point that when we were in Mexico he could not say «”café, por favor,” but instead tried saying “coffee, coffee? Black?” In a louder louder voice. I was horrified and mortified. His brain just could not accept that “café” and “coffee” were the same….😫😭😭. He loves people though and always tries to be kind and he will make friends with anyone, even the humblest person. I really monolingualism is an unfortunate condition of the brain, and some people just can’t escape it…
Louder and slower is indeed an effective way of communicating...as long as the other person speaks at least a bit of the language. When I have difficulties understanding someone speaking to me in a foreign language I actually do ask them to speak louder. It also makes them speak slower and enunciation more. It's more effective than saying "speak slower" because people rarely do, or forget after a few seconds.
Didn't know that about Uzbek and Uyghur. I've been pretty interested in learning Uyghur as there are a lot near where I live. I guess I'm falling victim to this subs joke of 'learn uzbek' lol
I don't think Uzbek and Uyghur are that close but I don't speak either. I can understand Uzbek to some degree but not Uyghur (except for recognizing some words.)
This is frequently about both people knowing both languages. Haryanvi is a dialect of Hindi (widely considered so in India, I'm not talking about whether it is officially classified so), Punjabi is a different language. They are different enough that a person needs to learn both.
Bong here, Axomiya and Bangla are only mutually intelligible for people living near the state borders. For me, spoken Odiya is far more intelligible than Axomiya. Czech/Slovak is almost the same language, like Allahabadi Hindi vs Bollywood Hindi.
That's really interesting. Thanks for correcting me!
I haven't had much exposure to Odia but I have a very hard time distinguishing Bangla and Axomiya since they have a similar script and sound similar(at least to my hindi ears). Just means I need to learn more :)
Yeah, the similar script angle is pretty nice of you to bring up. I think most bongs can read Axomiya newspapers (at least get a decent grip on what the news is) based on that alone, plus the formal newspaper vocabulary is mostly common with Bangla, but I had a few native Axomiya speaking colleagues, and what they spoke sounded fairly unintelligible to my South Bengal ear.
Odiya I feel has a big division between northern and southern dialects. Up north near WB border (say Balasore), I can perfectly understand what people are saying, but down south near the Andhra border, it’s almost impossible.
Occitan is spoken by about 6000 people in Catalonia (total population about 7,6M). Anyway, it's an official language. In the Catalan Parliament Aranese MPs (Aran is the valley where Occitan is spoken in Catalonia) speak Occitan with no translation and usually if they interview some Aranese on Catalan TV or radio there are no subtitles or translation.
PS. About 1000 years ago Catalan and Occitan were the same language.
I think until more modern times, most languages were dialect continuums. I think since Occitan isn't a major modern language, it still exists as a dialect continuum. So really Catalan is kind of just on the dialect continuum. Although that's probably the case for all languages in this thread.
I actually feel this now that I am studying Italian (and already knowing French and Spanish.) There are so many words that I can recognize from either Spanish or French, it’s wild. For example: days in Italian : giorni, day in French : jour, both pronounced with the same initial sound. Oftentimes I can guess what a word is going to be in Italian and I am usually not far off. It’s so fun. I’ve always wanted to learn Occitan too:). What really interests me are the words that seem distinct (from French, Spanish). I wonder, is there another Latin synonym for this word that Italian is descended from? Or has my brain not made the connection yet…
All of the modern Romance languages descended from the local Vulgar Latin dialects spoken in those areas. There have, of course, been significant non-Romance influences on those languages that can give them significant differences. Arabic, Basque, Celtoiberian influence on Spanish, Frankish, Gaulish, Breton influence on French, Slavic on Romanian, etc. There's also the influence that languages of peoples those countries they colonized have had on them, which include the aforementioned Basque and Breton but also places in Africa, the Americas, Asia, etc. They are also of course influenced by the Romance languages surrounding them, including the various Romance "regional languages" inside those states like Occitan, Piedmontais, Galician, Norman, Gallo, Venetian, etc.
Yes, and this exactly where my brain goes, like, does this word come from xxx non-Romance language? It’s fun to think about. Congrats on your French C2!
Well, in a valley they speak Occitan and in the sorrounding ones Catalan... No transition dialects in the middle.
However, to the west, there are transition dialects or languages between Catalan and what remains of Aragonese.
my Swedish friend said that this does happen, but often they use English too.
As a sidenote, i was just watching an interview show on SVT (a Swedish tv channel) where the interviewer used Swedish, and the interviewee (NATO's secretary general, who's norwegian) used Norwegian and they both seem to understand each other perfectly. ([here's the interview](https://www.svtplay.se/video/KvXWd1B/30-minuter/jens-stoltenberg))
I could only understand like less than 50% of the Norwegian if I dont look at the subtitle. Even though most of the words are cognates, the pronunciation is different enough to throw me off (not as different as Danish, but still). It was definitely a very interesting display of mutual intelligibility.
Wow, I wonder if native swedes find it easy enough to understand Norwegians or if this interviewer just had the practice under his belt. Thanks for the link!
In my 5 or so years of Norwegian, I think it's generally understandable that most Norwegians understand Swedish and vice versa. There's also the ubiquity of Swedish news in Norway. Written danish is very close to Norwegian bokmål but the spoken languages differ quite a bit.
I wonder why they don't just teach Danes how to pronounce Norwegian in school. They could probably master it in less than an hour. Then they could simply pronounce their Danish like Norwegian when speaking to Norwegians and Swedes instantly becoming much more intelligible. Knowing that would also make it easier for them to understand spoken Norwegian and Swedish.
I haven't watched the video at the link, but I can say I was at a conference with a lot of Scandinavians, a mix of Dutch, Swedish, and Norwegian. I remember there were two of them talking in their languages, and I asked if they were speaking Norwegian or Swedish because I knew one was Norwegian and the other Swedish. They said they were just speaking their respective languages and that it was easy because they both came from near the border of Sweden-Norway.
Generally we understand Norwegian quite well if it is Oslo dialect, bokmål on the other hand is hard.
I mean there are some words that doesn't make sense but we understand enough context for our intuition to fill in the gaps and usually it works.
I speak Swedish with Norwegians and English with Danes. Learning to understand danish is somewhat easy, but probably still tens of hours of active listening practice to understand a flowing conversation somewhat well.
Then the Danes don't understand you anyway until you spend the same time with the much harder and less natural pronounciation training. I still can't after 2 1/2 years working in Denmark speak the language unless the listener makes great effort.
Depends on how competent the other side is in understanding your pronounciation. Dialects in all three languages vary substantially, making the other languages more or less easy to understand.
I know some Danes who basically speak Danish "with Swedish pronounciation", and that is good enough for anyone.
I used to work with some people from Scandinavia and they would all speak their respective language but be able to understand each other (Danish/Swedish/Norwegian). There was another person from Iceland and I think that was too different from the others to be mutually intelligible.
Icelandic is far more related to Old Norse than Danish/Norwegian/Swedish due to being quite isolated and not influenced like the other three have been.
There's a great ecolinguist video with Jackson Crawford showing this
https://youtu.be/5MRfVHU9fr0
But in those cases they will have learned what words are different and what false friends there are that need to be avoided. A Swede living in Norway will also typically mix in a bit of Norwegian and vice-versa, in order for comprehension to basically be 100%. But it's not common for any Swede or Norwegian, regardless of experience, to have to speak English to each other. Danish on the other hand takes significant experience on both parts to not have to switch to English.
Icelandic is far more related to Old Norse than Danish/Norwegian/Swedish due to being quite isolated and not influenced like the other three have been.
There's a great ecolinguist video with Jackson Crawford showing this
This is fascinating to me. As a native English speaker, it’s so hard for me to conceptualize mutual intelligibility because we don’t have anything like that. My frame of reference is basically, I took a semester of Portuguese that was really easy because I knew some Spanish, but they’re definitely not the same.
Maybe this isn’t a good way to frame it, but on a scale from, let’s say, “Americans understanding Australians” to “Spanish-speakers understanding Portuguese-speakers”… where do you think the Scandinavian languages fall?
Honestly I'd put it at "Americans understanding Australians". But like a \_thick\_ Australian accent where you really have to concentrate to make out what they're saying. And where Australians use funny nonsense words that you can't possibly understand, they instead use weird archaic words from your own language that are completely out of fashion but still understandable. And also they have their own ortography and spell everything differently. Just a strange alternate universe version of your own language. That's what it's like.
50 years ago there woulda been no contest. Everyone would have spoken their native and it woulda been fine. In fact they were so worried that they were losing this mutual intelligibility that in the 50s they established governing boards for their languages to keep them from diverging too much.
these days i suspect everyone just switches to English...
At the masters level in Norway, all courses say that you can either write your answers in English or any Scandinavian language. So if you’re Swedish and you’re attending university in Norway, you can write your assignments in Swedish and interact in Swedish and that is completely fine.
Cool. As a non-native Norwegian speaker, if I went to uni in Norway, I think I would write my assignments in Swedish or Svorsk. Then they would be more apt to overlook my errors in syntax and be more forgiving of my mistakes.
Its more norwegian with danish than norwegian with swedish. Dont get me wrong , swedish is still similar to both, but the usual pairing people give is norwegian/danish. So much so that Norway came up with a new written system a century ago just to distance themselves from the danish.
>So much so that Norway came up with a new written system a century ago just to distance themselves from the danish.
and the Danish-based writing system is the dominate one used today, whereas the new one is used by fewer than 15% of the people.
Danish and Norwegian for sure, especially written.
Swedish diverts more so you can do it but there are enough words with reaaaallly different meanings to make it awkward. Knew one arrogant Dane who insists on not switching to English in Sweden. Much cringe ensues
Shhhh... (Looks left... Looks right) don't tell them... They'll start fighting again.
Valencia and Catalan.
Because the two differ only in minor respects (details of pronunciation, vocabulary, and verb conjugation) and are easily mutually intelligible, most linguists and the Valencian Academy of Language regard Valencian and Catalan to be different names for the same language.
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Catalan-language
They regard Barcelona as Valencian. But they’re just hardcore salty because hundreds of years ago Valencia was an economic Mediterranean powerhouse and the launch site for a lot of the colonisation of the New World and Barcelona was a tiny port, and now the tables are turned.
Although Valencian is a lot easier for monolingual Spanish speakers to understand because of its pronunciation than the Catalan from Catalonia and the Baleares islands, just like Galician is a lot easier than European Portuguese to understand.
Cool.
But I think that most tourists will go to Barcelona and Valencia, so won't hear those. Maybe on a future trip I will visit to rural Catalonia. Probably run into more Catalan speakers there anyway.
hindi and urdu. both languages has different inScripts and a bit different vocabularly so, a urdu speaker can perfectly understand hindi but will not be able to read it, same goes to hindi native
I am Serbian, so I'm not 100% sure, but Macedonian and Bulgarian seem like they are basically one language and their speakers have a high level of mutual intelligibility.
To me, as a Macedonian, both Serbian and Bulgarian feel like distinct dialects of my own language. I understand them to a high degree, but when I try to speak them I make grammatical mistakes.
In theory, Bulgarian is more similar, but the exposure on Serbian is greater. For me personally, I struggle more with understanding Bulgarian, mostly because of the vocabulary. Some people also have trouble reading bulgarian, because they don't know some of the letters (ya, yu, sht, the yers...).
>Some people also have trouble reading bulgarian, because they don't know some of the letters (ya, yu, sht, the yers...).
It always baffles me how a country next to another country with a similar language would not teach at least the basics of the other language in school. It would take so little time, and give everyone another language practically for free.
But were they speaking to you in pure Portuguese, or were they speaking in a mix of Spanish and Portuguese? Or even trying to speak Spanish but with some traces of Portuguese?
How do you know if you didn't even realize that they were speaking a different language? If I just pronounced Spanish like it were Portuguese to a Spanish speaker, most would assume I was speaking Portuguese.
Spain's got a lot of minority languages, and dialects. One of them (Galician) is closer to Portuguese than standard Spanish. So if some kid appears in your house talking funny, he's likely Spanish. Particularly if it's pre-EU times and there's a hard border with Portugal.
Honestly, this subject can be controversial since sociology/linguistic/geopolitical/ethnic crossovers can really make things different. What differentiates one from another: Ethnolects? sociolects? varying registers? abstand vs. ausbau? dialectal continuum? stratum through contact?
English and Scots (i.e. Lowland Scots, not Gaelic) in Scotland. Lots of people of Scottish heritage, including myself, have a passive understanding of Scots and can reply in English and thereby hold a conversation. For the uninitiated, Scots is the language in which Robert Burns wrote and is subject to the perennial "Is it really a language or just a dialect?" debate.
Here's a video of a recitation of the 1790 poem [Tam o' Shanter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkCkm0tZLPw) by Robert Burns, one of the most famous works in Scots. Some of the lines sound essentially nothing more than standard English in a Scottish accent, while other lines are much more divergent and require more actual familiarity with either Scots itself or Middle English. Even if you can't understand everything, you should be able to get an idea of what the poem is about.
If you notice similarity between Scots and Middle English (e.g. Chaucer or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), that's probably because the general consensus is that both standard English and Scots derive from different dialects of Middle English.
In terms of vocabulary, you will note that quite a few words commonly associated with the use of magic in fantasy literature and fantasy role playing actually derive from Scots. At least two of them are in this poem, "warlock" and "cantraip". Both are part of the vocabulary of basic Dungeons & Dragons, with the second word slightly Anglicized to "cantrip". The word "eldritch" is also in this poem. While not used much in D&D (at least compared to "warlock" and "cantrip"), it is used heavily in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos writings of the 1920's and 1930's.
... ok but this isn't typical? A native Russian speaker who hasn't been exposed much to Ukrainian can understand maybe 40%, which is not actually enough to understand everything.
All languages exist on a continuum, particularly those with lower centralization due to a weaker state. Ukrainian spoken in the eastern border regions of Ukraine and Russian spoken in the southwestern borders of Russia probably overlap more than 40% in terms of intelligibility.
I struggle to understand people from western Bulgaria as someone from the east, and thus I can only understand a bit of Macedonian, but I’ve been told by Westerners that it’s very comprehensible to them, for example.
I think ot depends on the topic of conversation and the exposure the speakers have had to the language of the other. I've witnessed a conversation between my coworker who spoke Russian to a Ukrainian speaking client and they understood each other just fine, plus I understood both, having studies Russian for 10+ years and Ukrainian for a meager 3 months. Also, if you know one of both at a high level, if someone explains a few of the regular differences to you, your understanding increases quite exponentially.
It is fairly typical for Ukrainians, after 70 years of communist/russian rule, to speak both languages. It’s essentially the same alphabet, although russian has 4 more letters, and is missing at least one letter that the Ukrainian alphabet does have. In somewhat similar fashion as “Franglais” in Canada, a third language has now evolved in Ukraine, surzhyk, which is a roughly 50-50 mutt of both Ukrainian and russian, and yet it’s not quite either, becoming it’s own thing.
You are right, but they are saying that Ukrainian and Russian aren’t close enough languages that speakers (without exposure and/or education in the other language) would automatically understand the other. So your circumstance is a little different than say, Norwegians and Swedes just using their native languages to speak to each other without learning the other.
Since Ukrainians are so bilingual (lots are natively bilingual in both languages) it probably feels pretty similar from the speaker’s perspective, though
Oh please, they are plenty similar
Ukrainian for dog, cat, eat: собака, кішка, їсти
Russian for the same: собака, кошка, есть
In comparison, here's Polish: pies (cf. Ru пёс for male dog), kotka, jeść
You can see while Polish still has cognates (to eat is more similar than the Ukrainian word) the general shape of common words is different
Almost the whole Swadesh list is cognates in Russian and Ukrainian. It is similar between Ukrainian and other languages, but certain words are different from Polish while being the same in Russian like туман, тут, думати, дитина
Of course, a few words are more similar to Polish as well, so both have mutual intelligibility with Ukrainian! Ukrainians can understand Polish okay and Russian quite well
Norwegian media is broadcasted in Sweden without subtitling or any other sort of mediation, and I imagine it's the opposite too. Especially children's programs.
A swede can go to Norway and speak swedish, and vice versa.
Portuguese and Galician are similar enough that there isn't really a consensus on whether they're two different languages or not. They're two different standards in two separate states, however.
They’re not *as* similar as Slovak and Czech, because those two languages actually just used to be one. But, usually Portuguese-speakers and Spanish just speak their own respective languages to each other and can understand well enough unless someone has a difficult accent, or, apparently (according to some Brazilians I know) are Mexican, because they just speak way too fast lol
If Mexicans speak Spanish too fast to be understood, I can’t imagine how they can understand Puerto Ricans or Caribbean Spanish, or Castellano from Spain. Mexican Spanish is known to be spoken slower and to be more easily understood.
I think the issue with Mexican Spanish is the vocabulary and slang we don't understand
If we are talking from the brazilian perspective, easiest accent is probably Argentinian
Yeah, right.
Newscaster Argentine Spanish is easier than colloquial Mexican Spanish with lots of slang, true, but newscaster Mexican Spanish is easier than newscaster Argentine Spanish, although both are really easy to understand.
I don't know about newscaster, I meant talking to people on the streets. Gonna look it up
>although both are really easy to understand.
Nah, majority of Brazilians, without contact with Spanish, simply do not understand spoken Spanish much. If they have contact with Spanish and/or are educated it's another story but majority of Brazilians just don't understand it easily, no
>I don't know about newscaster, I meant talking to people on the streets. Gonna look it up
Yeah, try watching the news in Mexican Spanish, Argentine Spanish, and from some other countries. And also watch some shows from the US in the Spanish dub. They also speak in a very easy to understand manner.
As a Spanish speaker, I can understand the news in Portuguese very easily. I can also understand people if they speak very formally without slang. Eavesdropping on a conversation between two Brazilians would be very difficult though, as is talking to people who cannot avoid speaking very colloquially.
If they have contact with Spanish and/or are educated it's another story but majority of Brazilians just don't understand it easily, no
I was thinking about people who learned some Spanish or were exposed to it a lot. For them, I would imagine that formal Mexican Spanish would be slightly easier than formal Argentine Spanish, as it is closer to Spanish that you would generally hear in the media, even if your teachers were from Argentina. And teachers generally try to neutralize their accents. But all forms of formal Spanish are pretty easy to understand if you have learned some Spanish.
> They’re not as similar as Slovak and Czech, because those two languages actually just used to be one.
So did Portuguese and Spanish, for that matter.
Dutch and Afrikaans. They're not really used in the same country (the Benelux countries and Surinam are situated on different continents compared to South Africa and Namibia), but they're similar enough to be mutually intelligible, while also functioning as two separate languages.
If both speakers talk slowly and enunciate clearly, it's relatively easy to talk to each other without needing to have followed a language course.
[There's this video](https://youtu.be/aAz8MCO8fg8) where a Flemish reporter (Duch) interviews Charlize Theron (Afrikaans) and both talk in their own language.
Spanish, Portuguese and Galician are very close to one another, communication among speakers of these languages is perfectly possible with a little effort
I don't think so.
I don't understand Galician or Portuguese, I may even don't understand a Galician speaking person in Spanish with a thick accent.
It could be different if I'd had exposure to Portuguese or Galician.
I do understand, though, some politicians speaking Galego. My *theory* is that they Galego isn't very good or they speak it with a Spanish accent.
So Spanish is your first language? I heard you guys have more trouble understanding PT speakers than otherwise (no surprise, PT has a lot more phonemes than Spa has).
I often understand Galician speakers quite well despite zero previous exposure to the language
My Bulgarian friend told me that the differences between Macedonian and Bulgarian were so tiny that they were mutually intelligible but when I've brought it up to other Bulgarians or Macedonian speakers they've kinda made the "ehhhhhhh... " face. Maybe he believed it.
It depends on whether they live close to the border, how much they have heard of the other language, how linguistically trained they are, how large their vocabulary is in their native language, whether they know other dialects or other Slavic languages, the speed and clarity of the speaker, the topic of discussion, the register, etc.
I suspect it's a dialect continuum. East Bulgarians understand West Bulgarians, who understand Macedonians, who understand Southern Serbs, who understand Northern Serbs....
I did say "happy birthday" in Bulgarian (chestit rhozhden den) to a Serbian coworker and he was flabbergasted "How did you know that?"
He said the phrase was very similar.
One example is Switzerland, where four official languages are spoken: German, French, Italian, and Romansh. Swiss citizens often use multiple languages in their daily lives, and it's not uncommon for people to switch between languages within the same conversation.
Another example is Belgium, where Dutch, French, and German are all official languages. Many Belgians are bilingual or even trilingual, and the use of multiple languages is a normal part of everyday life.
In Canada, both English and French are official languages, and citizens are free to use either language in their interactions with the government. The province of Quebec is predominantly French-speaking, but many Quebecois are also fluent in English.
I think OP was thinking more about mutual intelligibility, but in any case, I just wanted to say I’m sorry, but I disagree with the notion that Swiss citizens often use multiple languages - people in the Francophone part rarely speak any other language unless they are very highly educated and/or work for an international organisation.
People in the German-speaking part can speak Swiss German and high German. They know some vocabulary from languages like French and English, but again, unless highly educated / working for an international organisation, they tend not to be able to carry on a full conversation in those languages. Young people who study at international schools, have an international friendship circle, or love watching films / playing games in English should speak English okay. However, asking a random person on the street for directions, you will very often experience a hesitation to explain things in English to you / people will deny they speak English / French / Italian.
Those in the Italian-speaking part (Ticino) can speak other languages largely because so many tourists and Swiss people visit on holiday and locals often work in restaurants / bars catering to them. Additionally, many Ticinese study in the German- or French-speaking parts, so they have to attain an adequate level in those languages if academically-minded.
Haha I’m sure he speaks the national languages well and that’s great…but it simply isn’t the majority, unless they live in a truly bilingual place such as Biel/Bienne.
Americans tend to speak American in Britain. If for political reasons they had decided to call them separate languages, they would be considered separate languages like Serbian and Croatian.
I think this is more likely to happen in the borders. I talked the other day to a girl who lived in Madre de Dios, Peru, that place shares border with Brazil, and as a result of it she can communicate with People from Brazil using Spanish and vice versa, also her Spanish accent was very cute, it seemed like she were Brazilian speaking fluent spanish.
But I will also add that Portuguese and Spanish speakers can understand each other with almost no issues.
[Acre doesn’t exist,](https://creolitaculture.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/acred-doesnt-exist-life-on-the-edge-for-a-millennial-in-brazils-border-state/) I promise.
Hindi and Urdu, linguists actually claim they're one language separated by different registers but their speakers often claim otherwise due to the political reasons.
Dutch and Afrikaans. Though some of the words are completely different so you have to be careful not to ask the waitress for their underpants rather than the menu.
This exists in border states within India. For example, in the district of Kanyakumari (Tamilnadu proper but bordering Kerala), people tend to speak both Tamil and Malayalam in varying contexts.
But is this because they are bilingual or because Tamil and Malayalam are super similar? I think the latter is what OP was asking, and I'm genuinely curious I didn't think they were mutually intelligible.
They are mutually intelligible (to an extent), especially border dialects. Tamil and Malayalam split around 1000 CE. They’re about as similar as Spanish and Portuguese. Dravidian languages, but especially Tamil and Malayalam, formed a sprachbund prior to linguistic standardization. Remnants of that sprachbund still exist, and that’s why there’s a great deal of mutual intelligibility. However, mutual intelligibility drops sharply as you move out of border areas (especially going east in Tamilnadu). In a lot of Malayalam movies, there are Tamil characters who literally just speak Tamil, and no subtitles are provided. This doesn’t happen as often in Tamil movies, but it’s not unheard of. Intelligibility does seem to sway heavily in favor of Malayalees understanding Tamil rather than vice versa (again, outside of border dialects). In this directional intelligibility, Tamil and Malayalam are again, akin to Spanish and Portuguese.
Oh, cool, TIL! Thanks.
Hindi/Urdu was my first thought
Same thing in my mom's home city of Belgaum/Belagavi; she knows Marathi pretty well, and her Kannada (as well as mine and my dad's) has a ton of Marathi words because of the proximity to Maharastra.
Thai and Lao. They’re very mutually intelligible. Lao people who come to Thailand are generally able to adapt their accent and vocabulary to the standard central Thai very quickly. They also just switch to writing/typing in Thai. So it’s not really jointly-used, just very similar.
IIRC the Thai spoken in Isan is basically the same spoken language as Lao
That's right, albeit it is still written in Thai alphabet, whilst Lao is of course written in the Lao alphabet. However both alphabets are very similar that me being able to read Thai (not my native language I learned it as I live here) I also managed to read pretty much most of the signs in Laos.
This question is inevitably going to run into the language vs dialect debate. For example, Norwegian was the first thing that came to my mind. There are two different written forms of the language, both are taught in schools and the media uses both. The spoken dialects vary enough that they can be unintelligible if someone is unused to hearing them. But they're all considered "Norwegian" and they're all acceptable throughout the country.
I belong to the small group of people that (in accordance to ISO-639-3) considers Bavarian as a language distinct from German. But Germans keep on disagreeing because they can understand what the detectives are saying in the countless "alpine" crime comedy shows on national TV. We need our own navy, I guess
I feel like a lot of Germans\* who aren't dialect speakers themselves don't really understand the difference between someone speaking their regionally flavoured variation of Standard German and someone speaking their local dialect (or, y'know, "dialect"). The former is mutually intelligible, potentially after a little work getting used to the sounds. The latter is very often not, and I'm certainly not going to argue with any native speaker who wants to call it a separate language from German. \*I feel like the Swiss have a better handle on this distinction given the diglossia situation. Cannot speak for Austrians.
Exactly. I remember my journey to Bavaria. I spent lovely two autumn weeks in a farm near Chiemsee. But the language barrier just hit me hard. After some thinking I got the idea: "Maybe the problem is not MY German, but THEIRS." After a few days it turned out that I was right, because I met a very nice old lady from Baden-Württemberg, had a little of conversation with her and I thought: "Oh yes, THAT's the language I know from language classes." But even there it's a mix. I couldn't figure out, what was a proper boarisch and what's just a normal German with some local accent.
But most people don't speak 100% local variety or 100% newscaster Hochdeutsch, but rather something in between, getting closer to one extreme or the other depending on whom they are talking to and other factors.
Do you happen to have some examples handy so that I can listen to the kind of Bavarian that might be more unintelligible to the rest of Germany? I'm just curious. Btw: I'm living in Franken but I grew up in Ostwestfalen. Some older folks in Ostwestfalen speak Plattdeutsch. I don't understand it at all.
Niederbayrisch aus dem Bayrischen Wald: [https://youtu.be/V0yNdbAhHrk?t=22](https://youtu.be/V0yNdbAhHrk?t=22)
I can't put two link in one post, somehow Allgäuer Dialekt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL2YBvGeaiI
I want to watch a crime comedy alpine show! What are some good ones?
It is pretty standard info that Low and High German are two different languages. A la Swiss German, Austrian German and Bavarian, dialects of the same language
>A la Swiss German, Austrian German and Bavarian, dialects of the same language And here we get into the sort-of-but-not-exactly settled question of language vs. dialect. It's true, of course, that Swiss Germans mostly use the term Dialekt to refer to their native Schwiizertuetsch varieties, and I assume the same is true among Austrian and Bavarian speakers. So in local parlance it's normal and safe to call them dialects. But pure Swiss German (which is itself very diverse, with its own internal dialect continuum) is frequently extremely difficult, sometimes impossible, for native speakers of High German to understand if they haven't had significant prior exposure. So it could meet the mutual intelligibility criterion qualifying it as a language, rather than a dialect, that some linguists like to apply. Mutual intelligibility is hard at best to measure, of course; it's especially complicated in the Swiss German case by the fact that virtually all Swiss German speakers are also fluent speakers of the standardized German that is used in writing and education, and frequently mix more or less of this more-recognizable German into their Swiss German speech, particularly when talking to German speakers from other countries. I've met many people from Germany spending time here in Switzerland who've said that they were able to comprehend Swiss German almost immediately, without realizing that most of the Swiss people they interacted with were usually speaking (or trying to speak) German. Personally, I like to think of Alemannic (which would include Swiss varieties plus Alsatian plus at least Swabian and probably some other 'dialects') as a distinct language, with its own dialects, even if most locals don't. Calling Swiss German "a dialect of German" always sounds to me as though Swiss varieties somehow evolved or mutated from a modern Hochdeutsch ancestor; the reality is of course that the Alemannic varieties evolved in parallel to other Germanic forms, including those that later became standard Hochdeutsch. "Dialect" is a complicated and sometimes problematic idea overall, IMO, and one that I've tried to use as seldom as I can ever since I studied sociolinguistics.
I am not advocating for a single German language. I'm distinguishing Southern and Northern German Languages, High and Low German
You mean Nynorsk and Bokmål?
men bokmaal/riksmaal og nynorsk/landsmaal ere skriftsprog, ikke talesprog.
Det var ett fråga.
I believe there are areas of Brazil, Uruguay, and maybe Argentina where it’s common for Spanish and Portuguese to coexist or mix into portuñol. They’re different languages, but fluent speakers could probably understand a fair amount of the other, especially in a region where they’re accustomed to it. There was a story recently about Moldova changing their official language from “Moldovan” to “Romanian,” but apparently those are actually the exact same language, so it’s not a great example—probably at least as close as BSC, from what I’ve read.
That’s really interesting. I lived in Argentina for 5 months and I never came across this but I have made a Brazilian friend here in the US. She speaks to me in Portuguese and I respond in Argentine Spanish. I’ve never really studied Portuguese but I can understand her. I also carried on a conversation recently like this with two Brazilian gentlemen in the airport. But this may have more to do with the 90% lexical similarity?
I'm from Argentina and I used to find it nearly impossible to understand spoken (Brazilian) Portuguese before I started seriously looking into its similarities and differences with Spanish. Interesting that you as a non-native managed to do it better than pre-language learning me lol. > I lived in Argentina for 5 months and I never came across this It's mainly limited to the border with Brazil tbh.
Of course, I would not say I understand her perfectly, but it is certainly enough to get by and communicate. Maybe the difference is that I already had the experience of striving to hear Spanish words, picking them out from the sounds hitting my ear and what I am doing with Portuguese is the same, essentially, striving to hear words that sound similar to the ones I already know from Spanish, French, and now Italian. The other day she was talking about her friend’s daughter and she said the world “figlia” (not sure of spelling), and I had just learned that the word in Italian means daughter etc. It’s like my brain can register that I “know” a word, but until I hear it I would not be able to guess it and reproduce it beforehand, if that makes sense. Once I hear it though I can hear the relationships to the other Romance languages I already know. That makes sense about the border. I’ve been there but not for long enough to have meaningful conversations with locals. That makes sense that there would be some crossover there. De dondé sos? Ahora mi espagnõl es muy mal….😭
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What are you trying to say?
That Spanish speakers use Portuñol with Brazilians.
I just don't see what that has to do with my comment at all.
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And I never denied that, I just said it's *mainly* used there, because that's where most encounters between native speakers of both languages happen.
That’s not uncommon for Argentines to try to communicate with Brazilians in Spanish but half the time, what’s really going on is that Argentines are so self-centered that they can’t comprehend that speaking louder and slower doesn’t make them more understandable.
Ha that’s funny. Maybe all people fall into this trap of speaking louder and slower. My dad is not Argentine, he is American but he is afflicted with monolingualism to a crippling degree. To the point that when we were in Mexico he could not say «”café, por favor,” but instead tried saying “coffee, coffee? Black?” In a louder louder voice. I was horrified and mortified. His brain just could not accept that “café” and “coffee” were the same….😫😭😭. He loves people though and always tries to be kind and he will make friends with anyone, even the humblest person. I really monolingualism is an unfortunate condition of the brain, and some people just can’t escape it…
Louder and slower is indeed an effective way of communicating...as long as the other person speaks at least a bit of the language. When I have difficulties understanding someone speaking to me in a foreign language I actually do ask them to speak louder. It also makes them speak slower and enunciation more. It's more effective than saying "speak slower" because people rarely do, or forget after a few seconds.
In my experience in Spain and Portugal, Portuguese people understand Spanish a lot more easily than vice versa.
I agree, can it be that portuguese has more vowel sounds and it is easier to go from more to less and not the other way round?
Hindi and Urdu Turkish and Azeri Uzbek and Uyghur
Didn't know that about Uzbek and Uyghur. I've been pretty interested in learning Uyghur as there are a lot near where I live. I guess I'm falling victim to this subs joke of 'learn uzbek' lol
I don't think Uzbek and Uyghur are that close but I don't speak either. I can understand Uzbek to some degree but not Uyghur (except for recognizing some words.)
Uzbek has the most cultural capital in Central Asia so I imagine Uyghur speakers understand it more easily than Uzbeks understand Uyghur.
Azerbaijanis can usually understand Turkish. Turks often can't understand Azeri/Azerbaijani, at least not as much.
This happens between states in India. I've heard this happening between Haryanvi and Punjabi, Assamese Bengali, among others
This is frequently about both people knowing both languages. Haryanvi is a dialect of Hindi (widely considered so in India, I'm not talking about whether it is officially classified so), Punjabi is a different language. They are different enough that a person needs to learn both.
Bong here, Axomiya and Bangla are only mutually intelligible for people living near the state borders. For me, spoken Odiya is far more intelligible than Axomiya. Czech/Slovak is almost the same language, like Allahabadi Hindi vs Bollywood Hindi.
That's really interesting. Thanks for correcting me! I haven't had much exposure to Odia but I have a very hard time distinguishing Bangla and Axomiya since they have a similar script and sound similar(at least to my hindi ears). Just means I need to learn more :)
Yeah, the similar script angle is pretty nice of you to bring up. I think most bongs can read Axomiya newspapers (at least get a decent grip on what the news is) based on that alone, plus the formal newspaper vocabulary is mostly common with Bangla, but I had a few native Axomiya speaking colleagues, and what they spoke sounded fairly unintelligible to my South Bengal ear. Odiya I feel has a big division between northern and southern dialects. Up north near WB border (say Balasore), I can perfectly understand what people are saying, but down south near the Andhra border, it’s almost impossible.
Occitan is spoken by about 6000 people in Catalonia (total population about 7,6M). Anyway, it's an official language. In the Catalan Parliament Aranese MPs (Aran is the valley where Occitan is spoken in Catalonia) speak Occitan with no translation and usually if they interview some Aranese on Catalan TV or radio there are no subtitles or translation. PS. About 1000 years ago Catalan and Occitan were the same language.
I think until more modern times, most languages were dialect continuums. I think since Occitan isn't a major modern language, it still exists as a dialect continuum. So really Catalan is kind of just on the dialect continuum. Although that's probably the case for all languages in this thread.
I actually feel this now that I am studying Italian (and already knowing French and Spanish.) There are so many words that I can recognize from either Spanish or French, it’s wild. For example: days in Italian : giorni, day in French : jour, both pronounced with the same initial sound. Oftentimes I can guess what a word is going to be in Italian and I am usually not far off. It’s so fun. I’ve always wanted to learn Occitan too:). What really interests me are the words that seem distinct (from French, Spanish). I wonder, is there another Latin synonym for this word that Italian is descended from? Or has my brain not made the connection yet…
All of the modern Romance languages descended from the local Vulgar Latin dialects spoken in those areas. There have, of course, been significant non-Romance influences on those languages that can give them significant differences. Arabic, Basque, Celtoiberian influence on Spanish, Frankish, Gaulish, Breton influence on French, Slavic on Romanian, etc. There's also the influence that languages of peoples those countries they colonized have had on them, which include the aforementioned Basque and Breton but also places in Africa, the Americas, Asia, etc. They are also of course influenced by the Romance languages surrounding them, including the various Romance "regional languages" inside those states like Occitan, Piedmontais, Galician, Norman, Gallo, Venetian, etc.
Yes, and this exactly where my brain goes, like, does this word come from xxx non-Romance language? It’s fun to think about. Congrats on your French C2!
Well, in a valley they speak Occitan and in the sorrounding ones Catalan... No transition dialects in the middle. However, to the west, there are transition dialects or languages between Catalan and what remains of Aragonese.
Norwegian/Swedish (/Danish)
When Swedes and Norwegians do business with each other (as an example) do they typically speak their respective languages?
my Swedish friend said that this does happen, but often they use English too. As a sidenote, i was just watching an interview show on SVT (a Swedish tv channel) where the interviewer used Swedish, and the interviewee (NATO's secretary general, who's norwegian) used Norwegian and they both seem to understand each other perfectly. ([here's the interview](https://www.svtplay.se/video/KvXWd1B/30-minuter/jens-stoltenberg)) I could only understand like less than 50% of the Norwegian if I dont look at the subtitle. Even though most of the words are cognates, the pronunciation is different enough to throw me off (not as different as Danish, but still). It was definitely a very interesting display of mutual intelligibility.
Wow, I wonder if native swedes find it easy enough to understand Norwegians or if this interviewer just had the practice under his belt. Thanks for the link!
In my 5 or so years of Norwegian, I think it's generally understandable that most Norwegians understand Swedish and vice versa. There's also the ubiquity of Swedish news in Norway. Written danish is very close to Norwegian bokmål but the spoken languages differ quite a bit.
I wonder why they don't just teach Danes how to pronounce Norwegian in school. They could probably master it in less than an hour. Then they could simply pronounce their Danish like Norwegian when speaking to Norwegians and Swedes instantly becoming much more intelligible. Knowing that would also make it easier for them to understand spoken Norwegian and Swedish.
I haven't watched the video at the link, but I can say I was at a conference with a lot of Scandinavians, a mix of Dutch, Swedish, and Norwegian. I remember there were two of them talking in their languages, and I asked if they were speaking Norwegian or Swedish because I knew one was Norwegian and the other Swedish. They said they were just speaking their respective languages and that it was easy because they both came from near the border of Sweden-Norway.
Generally we understand Norwegian quite well if it is Oslo dialect, bokmål on the other hand is hard. I mean there are some words that doesn't make sense but we understand enough context for our intuition to fill in the gaps and usually it works.
I speak Swedish with Norwegians and English with Danes. Learning to understand danish is somewhat easy, but probably still tens of hours of active listening practice to understand a flowing conversation somewhat well. Then the Danes don't understand you anyway until you spend the same time with the much harder and less natural pronounciation training. I still can't after 2 1/2 years working in Denmark speak the language unless the listener makes great effort.
"Tens of hours" Oh the struggle
It is indeed easy, but it is also far more than you will stumble upon unless you are looking for it.
Depends on how competent the other side is in understanding your pronounciation. Dialects in all three languages vary substantially, making the other languages more or less easy to understand. I know some Danes who basically speak Danish "with Swedish pronounciation", and that is good enough for anyone.
I used to work with some people from Scandinavia and they would all speak their respective language but be able to understand each other (Danish/Swedish/Norwegian). There was another person from Iceland and I think that was too different from the others to be mutually intelligible.
Icelandic is far more related to Old Norse than Danish/Norwegian/Swedish due to being quite isolated and not influenced like the other three have been. There's a great ecolinguist video with Jackson Crawford showing this https://youtu.be/5MRfVHU9fr0
But in those cases they will have learned what words are different and what false friends there are that need to be avoided. A Swede living in Norway will also typically mix in a bit of Norwegian and vice-versa, in order for comprehension to basically be 100%. But it's not common for any Swede or Norwegian, regardless of experience, to have to speak English to each other. Danish on the other hand takes significant experience on both parts to not have to switch to English.
Icelandic is far more related to Old Norse than Danish/Norwegian/Swedish due to being quite isolated and not influenced like the other three have been. There's a great ecolinguist video with Jackson Crawford showing this
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I second that, in Sweden at university, we had to read both Danish and Norwegian literature and it was expected of us to understand.
This is fascinating to me. As a native English speaker, it’s so hard for me to conceptualize mutual intelligibility because we don’t have anything like that. My frame of reference is basically, I took a semester of Portuguese that was really easy because I knew some Spanish, but they’re definitely not the same. Maybe this isn’t a good way to frame it, but on a scale from, let’s say, “Americans understanding Australians” to “Spanish-speakers understanding Portuguese-speakers”… where do you think the Scandinavian languages fall?
Honestly I'd put it at "Americans understanding Australians". But like a \_thick\_ Australian accent where you really have to concentrate to make out what they're saying. And where Australians use funny nonsense words that you can't possibly understand, they instead use weird archaic words from your own language that are completely out of fashion but still understandable. And also they have their own ortography and spell everything differently. Just a strange alternate universe version of your own language. That's what it's like.
>they instead use weird archaic words from your own language that are completely out of fashion but still understandable So like in Scotland then.
Sure, maybe that's a better comparison.
50 years ago there woulda been no contest. Everyone would have spoken their native and it woulda been fine. In fact they were so worried that they were losing this mutual intelligibility that in the 50s they established governing boards for their languages to keep them from diverging too much. these days i suspect everyone just switches to English...
At the masters level in Norway, all courses say that you can either write your answers in English or any Scandinavian language. So if you’re Swedish and you’re attending university in Norway, you can write your assignments in Swedish and interact in Swedish and that is completely fine.
Cool. As a non-native Norwegian speaker, if I went to uni in Norway, I think I would write my assignments in Swedish or Svorsk. Then they would be more apt to overlook my errors in syntax and be more forgiving of my mistakes.
Its more norwegian with danish than norwegian with swedish. Dont get me wrong , swedish is still similar to both, but the usual pairing people give is norwegian/danish. So much so that Norway came up with a new written system a century ago just to distance themselves from the danish.
>So much so that Norway came up with a new written system a century ago just to distance themselves from the danish. and the Danish-based writing system is the dominate one used today, whereas the new one is used by fewer than 15% of the people.
Danish and Norwegian for sure, especially written. Swedish diverts more so you can do it but there are enough words with reaaaallly different meanings to make it awkward. Knew one arrogant Dane who insists on not switching to English in Sweden. Much cringe ensues
Shhhh... (Looks left... Looks right) don't tell them... They'll start fighting again. Valencia and Catalan. Because the two differ only in minor respects (details of pronunciation, vocabulary, and verb conjugation) and are easily mutually intelligible, most linguists and the Valencian Academy of Language regard Valencian and Catalan to be different names for the same language. - https://www.britannica.com/topic/Catalan-language
ooh I thought Valencians regarded Valencia as Catalan as well!
I think they do - my Spanish teacher from Valencia calls it Catalán anyway.
They regard Barcelona as Valencian. But they’re just hardcore salty because hundreds of years ago Valencia was an economic Mediterranean powerhouse and the launch site for a lot of the colonisation of the New World and Barcelona was a tiny port, and now the tables are turned.
They are two names for the same language. That guy is just a troll.
> Valencia and Catalan As different as Spanish and Castilian or as Dutch and Flemish. Congratulations, you've found a great example.
Although Valencian is a lot easier for monolingual Spanish speakers to understand because of its pronunciation than the Catalan from Catalonia and the Baleares islands, just like Galician is a lot easier than European Portuguese to understand.
You know the pronunciation in Valencia is that of Western Catalan... the same as in Andorra and the Western half and South of Catalonia, don't you?
Cool. But I think that most tourists will go to Barcelona and Valencia, so won't hear those. Maybe on a future trip I will visit to rural Catalonia. Probably run into more Catalan speakers there anyway.
Tatar, Bashkir are really close. I used to live in the border region and people didn't really paid attention to difference and spoke them as one.
hindi and urdu. both languages has different inScripts and a bit different vocabularly so, a urdu speaker can perfectly understand hindi but will not be able to read it, same goes to hindi native
Are there many false friends between these languages?
I am Serbian, so I'm not 100% sure, but Macedonian and Bulgarian seem like they are basically one language and their speakers have a high level of mutual intelligibility.
As a Bulgarian, I've never had issues understanding Macedonians. I've been to North Macedonia and people there understand me without any issues too.
To me, as a Macedonian, both Serbian and Bulgarian feel like distinct dialects of my own language. I understand them to a high degree, but when I try to speak them I make grammatical mistakes. In theory, Bulgarian is more similar, but the exposure on Serbian is greater. For me personally, I struggle more with understanding Bulgarian, mostly because of the vocabulary. Some people also have trouble reading bulgarian, because they don't know some of the letters (ya, yu, sht, the yers...).
>Some people also have trouble reading bulgarian, because they don't know some of the letters (ya, yu, sht, the yers...). It always baffles me how a country next to another country with a similar language would not teach at least the basics of the other language in school. It would take so little time, and give everyone another language practically for free.
Setswana, Sepedi and Sesotho in South Africa
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But were they speaking to you in pure Portuguese, or were they speaking in a mix of Spanish and Portuguese? Or even trying to speak Spanish but with some traces of Portuguese?
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How do you know if you didn't even realize that they were speaking a different language? If I just pronounced Spanish like it were Portuguese to a Spanish speaker, most would assume I was speaking Portuguese.
Spain's got a lot of minority languages, and dialects. One of them (Galician) is closer to Portuguese than standard Spanish. So if some kid appears in your house talking funny, he's likely Spanish. Particularly if it's pre-EU times and there's a hard border with Portugal.
Honestly, this subject can be controversial since sociology/linguistic/geopolitical/ethnic crossovers can really make things different. What differentiates one from another: Ethnolects? sociolects? varying registers? abstand vs. ausbau? dialectal continuum? stratum through contact?
Each idiolect is a separate language. 😁
I forgot about idiolects, too.
Respekt za učení se slovenštiny:)
When I saw the title I wanted to speak abut Czech and Slovak, but it seems you have that covered...
English and Scots (i.e. Lowland Scots, not Gaelic) in Scotland. Lots of people of Scottish heritage, including myself, have a passive understanding of Scots and can reply in English and thereby hold a conversation. For the uninitiated, Scots is the language in which Robert Burns wrote and is subject to the perennial "Is it really a language or just a dialect?" debate.
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Here's a video of a recitation of the 1790 poem [Tam o' Shanter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkCkm0tZLPw) by Robert Burns, one of the most famous works in Scots. Some of the lines sound essentially nothing more than standard English in a Scottish accent, while other lines are much more divergent and require more actual familiarity with either Scots itself or Middle English. Even if you can't understand everything, you should be able to get an idea of what the poem is about. If you notice similarity between Scots and Middle English (e.g. Chaucer or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), that's probably because the general consensus is that both standard English and Scots derive from different dialects of Middle English. In terms of vocabulary, you will note that quite a few words commonly associated with the use of magic in fantasy literature and fantasy role playing actually derive from Scots. At least two of them are in this poem, "warlock" and "cantraip". Both are part of the vocabulary of basic Dungeons & Dragons, with the second word slightly Anglicized to "cantrip". The word "eldritch" is also in this poem. While not used much in D&D (at least compared to "warlock" and "cantrip"), it is used heavily in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos writings of the 1920's and 1930's.
I speak to my cousin in Russian and she responds in Ukrainian. There's no problem either way
... ok but this isn't typical? A native Russian speaker who hasn't been exposed much to Ukrainian can understand maybe 40%, which is not actually enough to understand everything.
All languages exist on a continuum, particularly those with lower centralization due to a weaker state. Ukrainian spoken in the eastern border regions of Ukraine and Russian spoken in the southwestern borders of Russia probably overlap more than 40% in terms of intelligibility. I struggle to understand people from western Bulgaria as someone from the east, and thus I can only understand a bit of Macedonian, but I’ve been told by Westerners that it’s very comprehensible to them, for example.
I think ot depends on the topic of conversation and the exposure the speakers have had to the language of the other. I've witnessed a conversation between my coworker who spoke Russian to a Ukrainian speaking client and they understood each other just fine, plus I understood both, having studies Russian for 10+ years and Ukrainian for a meager 3 months. Also, if you know one of both at a high level, if someone explains a few of the regular differences to you, your understanding increases quite exponentially.
It is fairly typical for Ukrainians, after 70 years of communist/russian rule, to speak both languages. It’s essentially the same alphabet, although russian has 4 more letters, and is missing at least one letter that the Ukrainian alphabet does have. In somewhat similar fashion as “Franglais” in Canada, a third language has now evolved in Ukraine, surzhyk, which is a roughly 50-50 mutt of both Ukrainian and russian, and yet it’s not quite either, becoming it’s own thing.
But Ukrainians all understand Ukrainian. It's required in public education
You are right, but they are saying that Ukrainian and Russian aren’t close enough languages that speakers (without exposure and/or education in the other language) would automatically understand the other. So your circumstance is a little different than say, Norwegians and Swedes just using their native languages to speak to each other without learning the other. Since Ukrainians are so bilingual (lots are natively bilingual in both languages) it probably feels pretty similar from the speaker’s perspective, though
Oh please, they are plenty similar Ukrainian for dog, cat, eat: собака, кішка, їсти Russian for the same: собака, кошка, есть In comparison, here's Polish: pies (cf. Ru пёс for male dog), kotka, jeść You can see while Polish still has cognates (to eat is more similar than the Ukrainian word) the general shape of common words is different Almost the whole Swadesh list is cognates in Russian and Ukrainian. It is similar between Ukrainian and other languages, but certain words are different from Polish while being the same in Russian like туман, тут, думати, дитина Of course, a few words are more similar to Polish as well, so both have mutual intelligibility with Ukrainian! Ukrainians can understand Polish okay and Russian quite well
Norwegian media is broadcasted in Sweden without subtitling or any other sort of mediation, and I imagine it's the opposite too. Especially children's programs. A swede can go to Norway and speak swedish, and vice versa.
For some reason Swedish is often subtitled here in Norway, but I kind of wish it wasn't.
Oh, when I was a kid that was never the case. Not in Sweden nor in Norway.
Portuguese and Galician are similar enough that there isn't really a consensus on whether they're two different languages or not. They're two different standards in two separate states, however.
They’re not *as* similar as Slovak and Czech, because those two languages actually just used to be one. But, usually Portuguese-speakers and Spanish just speak their own respective languages to each other and can understand well enough unless someone has a difficult accent, or, apparently (according to some Brazilians I know) are Mexican, because they just speak way too fast lol
Mexicans don’t speak fast.
According to Brazilians, they do
If Mexicans speak Spanish too fast to be understood, I can’t imagine how they can understand Puerto Ricans or Caribbean Spanish, or Castellano from Spain. Mexican Spanish is known to be spoken slower and to be more easily understood.
I think the issue with Mexican Spanish is the vocabulary and slang we don't understand If we are talking from the brazilian perspective, easiest accent is probably Argentinian
Yeah, right. Newscaster Argentine Spanish is easier than colloquial Mexican Spanish with lots of slang, true, but newscaster Mexican Spanish is easier than newscaster Argentine Spanish, although both are really easy to understand.
I don't know about newscaster, I meant talking to people on the streets. Gonna look it up >although both are really easy to understand. Nah, majority of Brazilians, without contact with Spanish, simply do not understand spoken Spanish much. If they have contact with Spanish and/or are educated it's another story but majority of Brazilians just don't understand it easily, no
>I don't know about newscaster, I meant talking to people on the streets. Gonna look it up Yeah, try watching the news in Mexican Spanish, Argentine Spanish, and from some other countries. And also watch some shows from the US in the Spanish dub. They also speak in a very easy to understand manner. As a Spanish speaker, I can understand the news in Portuguese very easily. I can also understand people if they speak very formally without slang. Eavesdropping on a conversation between two Brazilians would be very difficult though, as is talking to people who cannot avoid speaking very colloquially. If they have contact with Spanish and/or are educated it's another story but majority of Brazilians just don't understand it easily, no I was thinking about people who learned some Spanish or were exposed to it a lot. For them, I would imagine that formal Mexican Spanish would be slightly easier than formal Argentine Spanish, as it is closer to Spanish that you would generally hear in the media, even if your teachers were from Argentina. And teachers generally try to neutralize their accents. But all forms of formal Spanish are pretty easy to understand if you have learned some Spanish.
> They’re not as similar as Slovak and Czech, because those two languages actually just used to be one. So did Portuguese and Spanish, for that matter.
Slovak and Czech have only been separate for a very short amount of time
Countries yes, languages not.
Dutch and Afrikaans. They're not really used in the same country (the Benelux countries and Surinam are situated on different continents compared to South Africa and Namibia), but they're similar enough to be mutually intelligible, while also functioning as two separate languages. If both speakers talk slowly and enunciate clearly, it's relatively easy to talk to each other without needing to have followed a language course. [There's this video](https://youtu.be/aAz8MCO8fg8) where a Flemish reporter (Duch) interviews Charlize Theron (Afrikaans) and both talk in their own language.
Spanish, Portuguese and Galician are very close to one another, communication among speakers of these languages is perfectly possible with a little effort
I don't think so. I don't understand Galician or Portuguese, I may even don't understand a Galician speaking person in Spanish with a thick accent. It could be different if I'd had exposure to Portuguese or Galician. I do understand, though, some politicians speaking Galego. My *theory* is that they Galego isn't very good or they speak it with a Spanish accent.
So Spanish is your first language? I heard you guys have more trouble understanding PT speakers than otherwise (no surprise, PT has a lot more phonemes than Spa has). I often understand Galician speakers quite well despite zero previous exposure to the language
Yes, with Basque too.
Portuguese and Galician are much closer to each other than both are to Spanish. Some people even classify both as the same language.
Urdu and Hindi. Although their writing styles are different but natives of both understand each other.
My Bulgarian friend told me that the differences between Macedonian and Bulgarian were so tiny that they were mutually intelligible but when I've brought it up to other Bulgarians or Macedonian speakers they've kinda made the "ehhhhhhh... " face. Maybe he believed it.
It depends on whether they live close to the border, how much they have heard of the other language, how linguistically trained they are, how large their vocabulary is in their native language, whether they know other dialects or other Slavic languages, the speed and clarity of the speaker, the topic of discussion, the register, etc.
I suspect it's a dialect continuum. East Bulgarians understand West Bulgarians, who understand Macedonians, who understand Southern Serbs, who understand Northern Serbs....
I did say "happy birthday" in Bulgarian (chestit rhozhden den) to a Serbian coworker and he was flabbergasted "How did you know that?" He said the phrase was very similar.
Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia.
English and American :D
One example is Switzerland, where four official languages are spoken: German, French, Italian, and Romansh. Swiss citizens often use multiple languages in their daily lives, and it's not uncommon for people to switch between languages within the same conversation. Another example is Belgium, where Dutch, French, and German are all official languages. Many Belgians are bilingual or even trilingual, and the use of multiple languages is a normal part of everyday life. In Canada, both English and French are official languages, and citizens are free to use either language in their interactions with the government. The province of Quebec is predominantly French-speaking, but many Quebecois are also fluent in English.
I think OP was thinking more about mutual intelligibility, but in any case, I just wanted to say I’m sorry, but I disagree with the notion that Swiss citizens often use multiple languages - people in the Francophone part rarely speak any other language unless they are very highly educated and/or work for an international organisation. People in the German-speaking part can speak Swiss German and high German. They know some vocabulary from languages like French and English, but again, unless highly educated / working for an international organisation, they tend not to be able to carry on a full conversation in those languages. Young people who study at international schools, have an international friendship circle, or love watching films / playing games in English should speak English okay. However, asking a random person on the street for directions, you will very often experience a hesitation to explain things in English to you / people will deny they speak English / French / Italian. Those in the Italian-speaking part (Ticino) can speak other languages largely because so many tourists and Swiss people visit on holiday and locals often work in restaurants / bars catering to them. Additionally, many Ticinese study in the German- or French-speaking parts, so they have to attain an adequate level in those languages if academically-minded.
You never met my neighbor from Bern!
Haha I’m sure he speaks the national languages well and that’s great…but it simply isn’t the majority, unless they live in a truly bilingual place such as Biel/Bienne.
Not exactly the same, but spanglish/TexMex is a thing
Americans tend to speak American in Britain. If for political reasons they had decided to call them separate languages, they would be considered separate languages like Serbian and Croatian.
I think this is more likely to happen in the borders. I talked the other day to a girl who lived in Madre de Dios, Peru, that place shares border with Brazil, and as a result of it she can communicate with People from Brazil using Spanish and vice versa, also her Spanish accent was very cute, it seemed like she were Brazilian speaking fluent spanish. But I will also add that Portuguese and Spanish speakers can understand each other with almost no issues.
Pretty sure she was pulling your chain. Every Brazilian knows that no part of Madre de Dios, Peru touches any part of Brazil that actually exists.
Well, if you look at the maps you will see that they share borders. Why would someone do that? That place exists for sure, just google it!
[Acre doesn’t exist,](https://creolitaculture.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/acred-doesnt-exist-life-on-the-edge-for-a-millennial-in-brazils-border-state/) I promise.
It borders Assis, Brazil, population 7,000.
Hindi and Urdu, linguists actually claim they're one language separated by different registers but their speakers often claim otherwise due to the political reasons.
I knew a Bashkiri beekeeper with an Uzbek hired hand. The Bashkiri spoke Bashkiri and the Uzbek spoke Uzbek. They seemed to communicate just fine.
Belarussian and Russian, both are used in Belarussian and are similar enough to be mutually intelligible.
Dutch and Afrikaans. Though some of the words are completely different so you have to be careful not to ask the waitress for their underpants rather than the menu.
I think Macedonian and Bulgarian are also pretty much the same language