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Mutual intelligibility is sometimes used to distinguish languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used. Intelligibility between varieties can be asymmetric; that is, speakers of one variety may be able to better understand another than vice versa. An example of this is the case between Afrikaans and Dutch. It is ...
The term is generally meant to imply a lack of mutual intelligibility between the two languages. If two adjacent languages or dialects are mutually intelligible, no firm border will develop, because the two languages can continually exchange linguistic inventions; this is known as a dialect continuum. A "language island" is a language area that ...
There are considerable variations from region to region, with degrees of mutual intelligibility that are often related to geographical distance and some that are mutually unintelligible. Many aspects of the variability attested to in these modern variants can be found in the ancient Arabic dialects in the peninsula.
The variations due to differing wordlists weigh on this. For example, lexical similarity between French and English is considerable in lexical fields relating to culture, whereas their similarity is smaller as far as basic (function) words are concerned. Unlike mutual intelligibility, lexical similarity can only be symmetrical.
Intelligibility may refer to: Mutual intelligibility, in linguistics; Intelligibility (communication) Intelligibility (philosophy) See also. Immaterialism, in ...
There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, [7] [13] [14] particularly in written form. [6] [12] [15] Research suggests that mutual intelligibility between Dutch and Afrikaans is better than between Dutch and Frisian [16] or between Danish and Swedish. [15]
Meanwhile, a Sicilian-speaking person would have a greater degree of mutual intelligibility with a speaker of the more closely related Neapolitan language, but far less mutual intelligibility with a person speaking Sicilian Gallo-Italic, a language that developed in isolated Lombard emigrant communities on the same island as the Sicilian language.
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the interaction between society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context and language and the ways it is used. It can overlap with the sociology of language, which focuses on the effect of language on society.