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A Master List of Language Transparency | ||
Tags: Transparency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6702 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 1 of 7 20 August 2006 at 6:04am | IP Logged |
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I've been wondering if anyone has tried to compile a list of related languages and their relative transparency. I've seen a number of threads on this board arguing over the differences, and if we had a list, then at least we wouldn't have to keep going over the same ground.
I'd propose a system where the main language is listed, and then related languages listed underneath. If the languages are nearly or exactly the same ( >90% mutual comprehension), the they are given the number '0'. The next level down (ca. 70-90% mutual comprehension) are given the number '1'. The next set (ca.50-70% mutual comprehension) would be given the number '2'. Less than 50% comprehension won't be listed. I know this list will be full of subjective and debateable entries, since there's no 'scientific' way of showing mutual comprehensibility. Just think of this as a guide, and not rules. The ones that I can think of, based on my own opinions and what I've heard from others: Urdu 0 Hindu 1 Panjabi 2 Bengali, Gujarati Indonesian 0 Malay Spanish 1 Italian, Portugese 2 French Norwegian 1 Swedish 2 Danish Czech 1 Slovak Dutch 1 Afrikaans 2 German Bosnian 0 Croatian, Montenegrian, Serbian Russian 1 Ukrainian, Belarussian 2 Polish Flemish 0 Dutch Edited by Raincrowlee on 20 August 2006 at 6:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 7 20 August 2006 at 6:26am | IP Logged |
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How have you chosen your "main" languages?
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| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6702 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 3 of 7 20 August 2006 at 6:54am | IP Logged |
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There's no particular criteria, since I'm at a research level. It's a work in progress. To be complete, the list should show each of the main languages with a list around them, so there would be a Malay with a 0 Indonesian.
There's also the fact that, for instance, I got the Urdu ratings from Adrischar's post on Urdu, which gives a subjective transparency for Panjabi, Bengali and Gujarati relative to Urdu, but not to each other. As I get more responses, the list could be made more complete. Edited by Raincrowlee on 20 August 2006 at 6:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 4 of 7 20 August 2006 at 7:31am | IP Logged |
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We've had a thread on this before, but there's no such language or dialect as "Flemish". There are several distinct dialects spoken in Flanders that are as different (or similar) from each as they are from standard Dutch.
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| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6840 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes Studies: Korean | Message 5 of 7 21 August 2006 at 6:50am | IP Logged |
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Interesting, but I can see some challenges for you. First of all, as for choosing "main languages", you might choose a list of all languages you include as both the rows and columns of a table (spreadsheet). There will be lots of totally unintelligible languages.
As for the challenges, how do you come up with your values? Who is to say that Swedish and Norwegian are 70% to 90% mutually intelligible? What are your criteria? (If you are going down the route of "experts", you might want to average a dozen or so opinions.) Finally, wouldn't you simply replicate a language tree...? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 7 03 September 2006 at 12:31pm | IP Logged |
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Even the notion of interintelligibility is not totally clear. Take one halfdeaf farmer from area A, who has never owned a TV set nor even visited the neighbor village (but hurry, those people are dying out fast!). Furthermore take one toothless shepherd from another area 500 kms away, who has spent all his life looking at 100 sheep and one goat, and who likewise has never owned any electronic gadget nor visited his neighbor villages. Let the shepherd tell the farmer about some arcane aspect of shepherding through a bad recording and ask the farmer: "Please translate to us exactly what the shepherd said". He might not be able to do it, and then you have proved the lack of transparency betwen the lingos of those two gentlement.
Or ask a mischievous student from a dialect speaking region to write down what his drunken friends might say about some aspect of their social life, but not in his usual language, nah - let him invent his totally own phonetic ortography based partly on Klingon, partly on his deialdect, but first and foremost on the rule that absolutely nothing should be spelled like in the standard artughraephew, and then you're ready to postulate a new language based on the written form of "drunkenfriend-ish". Well, of course serious lingustics doesn't function like that. but right now I see a tendency to stress the differences and forgetting about the continuum that lies between the more extreme dialects/languages. I also think that interintelligibility is to some degree is a question of good will and training in understanding new language forms, - but of course these don't function beyond a certain treshold. As for Virgule's question about the language tree: the classical way of defining this tree is based on strict laws for phonological change, laid down around 1800, and applied primarily on words that typically survives even drastical changes in vocabulary and use of the languages in question. However interintelligibility is probably based as much on the use of loanwords whatever their origin as on the wordstock used by the historical linguists. Furthermore the language tree doesn't take in account differences in the speed of changes in two cognate languages. Therefore the two methods will not give exactly the same results. Edited by Iversen on 03 September 2006 at 1:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6852 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 7 of 7 03 September 2006 at 5:12pm | IP Logged |
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but if we choose not to be picky, the list we come up with might be a useful approximation for beginner students of foreign languages. I thought the transparency feature on the website was great when I first discovered the site and before I read through many informative posts on the forum dealing with the topic in greater detail.
I can add few points from my experiences: Slovaks and Poles communicate using their own languages and when there's some confusion arising, for the most part it's enough to just change the wording and add some gesticulation. I don't think it's very troublesome for natives. Think about trying a word "seek" when "look for" wasn't understood, or "chamber" when you mean just a regular "room". It may be less of an option for students of either one of those languages, unless they know a considerable amount of less frequently used synonyms for common words. Knowledge of sound shifts would be helpful. I knew of only one last time I visited Slovakia, Slovak h to Polish g and it was useful. I think Slovak for Polish speakers is a strong "2", and after some practice it may become a "1". By "some practice" I mean few conversations, watching a couple of TV shows, figuring out a menu in a restaurant, reading signs. Easily accomplished during a week long ski trip (speaking from experience). The formal language is another thing, and since I didn't have much contact with it I won't make any assumptions. As for Czech I can only say it's a little less transparent than Slovak, but still enough for the basic communication. A 2 would still be appropriate. More gesticulating and more English/German words mixed in for better communication, I would assume :) Never had the chance to get used to it as I had with Slovak. Don't be scared of by a Polish expression "Czeski film" (a Czech movie) when something is "all Greek to you". After sitting next to a Belarussian couple during a transatlantic flight and having to listen to their conversatin I had the same problems as with Russian. I could understand some sentences perfectly, catch an odd word here and there, but overall I had no clue what's going on. edit: typo Edited by Kubelek on 03 September 2006 at 5:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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