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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 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.
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]
The largest differences are found in pronunciation and language-specific vocabulary, which may hinder mutual intelligibility to some extent in some dialects. All dialects of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish form a dialect continuum within a wider North Germanic dialect continuum .
However, research by Trentman & Shiri indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations.
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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 ...
Most assessments of mutual intelligibility of varieties of Chinese in the literature are impressionistic. [71] Functional intelligibility testing is time-consuming in any language family, and usually not done when more than 10 varieties are to be compared. [72] However, one 2009 study aimed to measure intelligibility between 15 Chinese provinces.