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Interintelligibilty (transparency) | ||
Tags: Transparency | Linguistic relationships | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| vilas Pentaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6742 days ago 531 posts - 722 votes  Speaks: Spanish, Italian*, English, French, Portuguese | Message 1 of 11 10 August 2006 at 8:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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I would like to have opinions about interintelligibilty between distinct languages.
I am interested to know which level of mutual understanding there is between : Hindi - Urdu Dutch - Afrikaans Portuguese - Gallego Italian - Corsican Serbian - Croatian - Bosnian - Montenegrin Czech - Slovak Danish - Swedish - Norwegian - Icelandic Finnish - Estonian and other languages that have astrong affinity I am just curious . I can say only that as Italian I understand 90% of Corsican without help of a dictionary. Anyone can answer me? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6485 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 2 of 11 10 August 2006 at 9:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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As for the Nordic languages:
Nobody from Denmark, Norway, Sweden can understand Icelandic or Faroese without having studied at least one of these (and it is not easy to learn those languages even for Scandinavians). I would guess that the inverse is also true, but as Danish is taught in school both in Iceland and on the Faroe Island, it is more difficult to test. And it doesn't matter that the language historians have put Norwegian (except bokmål) in the same group, - that has no relevance to today's linguistical situation. Written Faroese differ from written Icelandic, but not too much. However I'm told that oral interunderstandability is another matter. Written Danish and Swedish do differ, but we can generally understand each other when we write. Norwegian formerly used almost pure Danish in writing, but has now moved to a compromise form that still is not too far from written Danish. Swedish has always been different, but we understand it. Spoken Norwegian and Swedish will generally be understood by Danes, but there are many 'false friends' and other caveats. By the way Finland-Swedish is easier to understand than Skånsk (from Southern Sweden), even if Skåne can be spotted across Øresund from Danmark, - strange. Danish is a mumbled language which may give more problems, but if we try to speak slowly and clearly, then the others can understand us, - it is sometimes a matter of will. Somebody in this forum suggested that Danes who speak English to their Nordic brethren should have their tongues cut out (!!!!). OK, then Swedes who don't listen even when we try to speak slowly should have their ears cut out. That would be something of a bloodbath. The guides of several charter travel companies are taught to speak a melange of several Scandinavian languages because they have a mixed stock of customers. I have - as usual - one little comment about dialects. If we go back a generation or two (before television) then some Danish dialects were said to be impossible to understand for other Danes, - for instance people from many parts of Jutland were deemed to be utterly incomprehensible for people from Copenhagen. And if you studied these dialects you did indeed find major differences. For instance the Nordic languages are famous (more or less) for having suffixes instead of definite articles: en mand (a man) / mandEN (the man). But in the dialects of Jutland we do have a definite article: æ mand (the man). In 'Fynsk' we have three cases (masculinum, femininum and neutrum) instead of two, there is no glottal stop in the dialect of Lolland and so on. But nobody in Danmark has ever suggested that these differences meant that we had more than one Danish language, - maybe that is one reason why I am somewhat more reluctant to accept small and obscure dialects as languages elsewhere. By the way, the dialects are rapidly dying out so the whole problem will soon be history. Edited by Iversen on 02 November 2006 at 10:09am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Skandinav Hexaglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 6669 days ago 139 posts - 145 votes Speaks: Danish*, English, German, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian | Message 3 of 11 10 August 2006 at 9:27am | IP Logged | |||||
That may have been me:) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6485 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 4 of 11 10 August 2006 at 9:29am | IP Logged | |||||
I did try to protect your identity... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6938 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 11 10 August 2006 at 10:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Czech and Slovak: Standard forms are still mutually intelligible at least 85% of the time. I've obsevred that there is a slight asymmetry in intelligibility with Slovaks being able to understand Czech a bit better than Czechs being able to understand Slovak.
However, some people (especially children) are starting to have problems with mutual intelligibility since there's much less exposure of Slovak culture/language in the media in Czech Republic than during the existence of Czechoslovakia. It was a bit scandalous last year when a TV station had to add Czech subtitles for a Slovak show that was being broadcast in Czech Republic. Dialects are another story as some eastern Slovak dialects differ a lot from some western Czech dialects. It's usually more convenient for these people to speak the respective standard languages when dealing with each other since the standard languages are closer to each other than their respective dialects. Here's an article on Wikipedia Edited by Chung on 10 August 2006 at 10:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6676 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 11 10 August 2006 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The scandinavian languages seem to have been covered thouroughly and I really have nothing to add there.
Finnish and Estonian are close enough that you can recognise a considerable percentage of the words and an occasional complete phrase here and there. You can generally identify the subject being discussed but not follow what is being said in detail. EDIT: I'd say that Finnish and Estonian are something like two to three times further apart than Swedish and Danish, if that makes sense to anyone. On the other hand they are clearly closer to each other than Swedish and German. I believe many Estonians from Tallinn and other northern parts have grown up watching Finnish television and can generally understand Finnish much better than Finns can understand them. Edited by Hencke on 11 August 2006 at 6:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Thomaskim Groupie Joined 7051 days ago 84 posts - 85 votes | Message 7 of 11 10 August 2006 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
Guys, there has already been an infamous bloodbath in Stockholm in 1520! So please let's keep this merely a divergence of linguistic abilities. By the way, as a (non-native)speaker of Danish, when in Sweden, I always ask Swedish speakers if it's ok if I speak in Danish. They usually agree.But it does turn out to become more of a Scandinavian interlanguage after 5 minutes! I also agree that Finlandsvensk (Swedish as spoken in Finland along the coast)is way easier on the ear than skånsk at least to the foreign learner. And it lacks the difficult sound (as in Stockholm pron of '7')making it easier to understand. As for Danish dialects, I do find Copenhagers tend to speak much faster than 'out west' in Jutland and with every stød that comes with it! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Thomaskim Groupie Joined 7051 days ago 84 posts - 85 votes | Message 8 of 11 10 August 2006 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
Corsican is a Romance 'dialect' (just like Tuscan - let's not go into the language/dialect dichotomy )-no wonder you don't need a dictionary! Gallego is yet another Romance language - closer to Portuguese than Castilian Spanish - I think technically it's one of the Portuguese dialectsc- a prestigious form as attested to by its rich literature and was even spoken by Spanish monarchs 1 person has voted this message useful |
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