Mutual intelligibility
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without intentional study or special effort. It is usually used as the most important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used.
Intelligibility between languages can be asymmetric, with speakers of one understanding more of the other than speakers of the other understand of the first. When it is relatively symmetric, it is characterized as 'mutual'. It exists in differing degrees among many related or geographically proximate languages of the world, often in the context of a dialect continuum.
See also
- Dialect continuum
- Dialect levelling
- Language secessionism
- Lexical similarity
- Multilingualism
- Non-convergent discourse
- Pluricentric language
- Standard language
