Thus scots english may at first be quite unintelligible to speakers of the various varieties of standard american english, and vice versa. Mutual intelligibility between speakers of four related language varieties spoken in the northern half of the island of pentecost in vanuatu raga, suru kavian, suru rabwanga and suru mwerani is. Instead of similarity, we could also use the inverse concept of distance, in which case, the greater the distance between two languages, the smaller their degree of mutual intelligibility. Slavic czech,slovakandpolishandthreesouthslaviclanguagescroatian,sloveneand bulgarian. Slavic language mutual intelligibility finnish, interesting. Dinu faculty of mathematics and computer science, university of bucharest center for computational linguistics, university of bucharest alina. Languages of the world department of computer science. May 28, 2014 mutual intelligibility hovers at around the 90% mark both ways, with a very slight advantage held by the slovaks in understanding czech.
The measurement of mutual intelligibility between west. In 1966, einar haugen referred to this type of communication as. While the grammar is different from english, there is a significant amount of vocabulary overlap and pronunciation similarity. Kajkavian has higher mutual intelligibility with slovene than the national varieties of shtokavian, while chakavian has a low mutual intelligibility with either, in part due to large number of loanwords from venetian. The results show that in most cases, a division between west and south slavic languages does exist and that west. Mutual intelligibility and surprisal in slavic intercomprehension incomslav project c4 investigates the relation between information density, encoding density and grammaticalisation in a crosslinguistic perspective, focusing on intercomprehension within the family of slavic languages. Czech is nearly as hard as polish and is probably not worth your time and effort. Are slovak, czech, and polish all mutually intelligible. As noticed, there are several aspects by which linguistic distances ld between a certain pair of languages may differ. Hes the site administrator and i am waiting for him to give me some site tools i need to help administer the site.
Mutual intelligibility in the slavic language area 66 3. 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 prior familiarity or special effort. In the present study we tested the level of mutual intelligibility between three west slavic czech, slovak and polish and three south slavic languages croatian, slovene and bulgarian. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used. Czech, slovak, polish, croatian, slovenian and bulgarian on the level of lexicon, orthography. Ruthenian is an interesting language that few have heard of. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from. Pdf mutual intelligibility of languages in the slavic family robert. These mutually intelligible languages will make you do a. Czech and polish are incomprehensible to serbocroatian, but serbocroatian has. First of all, once you make yourself aware of mutually intelligible languages, you.
Languages understandable to englishspeakers without learning. Their mutual intelligibility varies greatly, both between the dialects themselves as well as with other languages. Pasha is helping me test polish ukrainian mutual intelligibility. I find the poles are also more easygoing and friendly, and the czechs tend to be a bit snobbish and standoffish. On the romance languages mutual intelligibility alina maria ciobanu, liviu p. Languages as a base for modeling of mutual intelligibility. Im a native speaker of both these languages, so i will try to compare it for you. I am curious if anyone can help me understand the extent of mutual intelligibility between some of the major indoaryan languages eg. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages in. Full text views reflects the number of pdf downloads. I spent the first 6 years of my life in ukraine and grew up speaking russian and english russian was the main language of ukraine back then, these days i dont speak it natively anymore but i still know my fair share of russian. University of groningen mutual intelligibility in the slavic. How mutually intelligible are the various slavic languages.
Oct 22, 2010 the explanation is that the modern russian language moved away from its eastern slavic brothers belorussian and ukrainian and its western slavic cousins polish, czech etc. Oct 23, 2019 unfortunately, the mutual intelligibility test does not always lead to clearcut results. Orthographic and morphological correspondences between related slavic languages as a base for modeling of mutual intelligibility andrea fischer, klara jagrova, irina stenger, tania avgustinova, dietrich klakow, and roland marti. The west slavic languages are close enough for their speakers to use their mother tongues when communicating with each other. It is not true at all that ukrainian and russian are mutually intelligible, as.
However, russian is only 74% mutually intelligible with spoken belarusian. Intelligibility of czech and slovak is 82% and varies from 7095% depending on the dialect. Pdf in the present study we tested the level of mutual intelligibility between three west slavic czech, slovak and polish and three. True, given enough time and goodwill, mutual intelligibility can be achieved without too much effort. The basic missiontask of the czechpolish forum is to support both current and new common initiatives. But again, this is a separate discussion from mutual intelligibility. This type of com munication is called receptive multilingualism and our tourist is quite familiar with it. Mutual intelligibility among the slavic languages by robert lindsay the mutual intelligibility mi of the languages of the slavic family is an interesting topic because many are mutually intelligible to one degree or another. Factors explaining intelligibility a model of intelligibility. This blog post is available as a convenient and portable pdf that you. Pdf mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic. The strength of foreign accent in czech english under. Mutual intelligibility wikimili, the best wikipedia reader.
At the same time when russian kids are growing up they read a lot of russian fairytales collected and written down in 19th century which have a lot of common slavic. Orthography in language modeling of mutual intelligibility. These mutually intelligible languages will make you do a double take. Jun 03, 2009 the czech children dont speak slovak, only few words which are the same, but they couldnt translate a czech text to slovak the reason why all slovaks can speak czech is the television in czechoslovakia the tv was in both languages, but after they separated the czech rep. How can the mutual intelligibility between closely related languages be measured. Russian, belarussian and ukrainian were not among the languages. Mutual intelligibility between closely related languages in europe pdf.
The mutual intelligibility is partial and perhaps asymmetric, but one can often discern the meanings of the majority of the words in a sentence, and correctly infer the grammar. It is commonly believed that all slavic languages are fully mutually intelligible, which implies that they are close. Mutual intelligibility among the slavic languages beyond. Between sources, you might find some claiming that two languages are mutually intelligible, while other sources claim those same languages arent. Since then, slovak has been disappearing from the czech republic, so the younger people dont understand slovak so well. Mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic. Article pdf available in russian linguistics 393 november 2015 with 973 reads. It may be orthography, morphologylexicon, or phonetics. In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which. Bengali, gujarati, hindiurdu, marathi, nepali, punjabi, possibly with a parallel to either the romance or slavic families with which i have some familiarity.
Last voicesson sesler robert lindsay mutual intelligibility of l. As an example, the polish, czech, russian, and bulgarian forms of the. Mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic languages. Orthographic and morphological correspondences between. T1 mutual intelligibility in the slavic language area. Moldovan does, however, have more foreign loanwords from russian and. N2 in the globalized world we live in today international cooperation is extremely important, but not all europeans can speak english very well. The question then becomes which features and which adaptation procedures one needs to consider. Another thing that could have thrown off my bulgarian friend is that czech has undergone a particular set of vowel shifts since the days of old czech or protoslavonic where a and u tended to change into e or i.
Mutual intelligibility and surprisal in slavic intercomprehension. Mutual intelligibility in the slavic language area research. Were testing polish czech mutual intelligibility by playing a guess a person game. Mutual intelligibility of languages in the slavic family. Mutual intelligibility in slavic language specific. This thesis explores mutual intelligibility in the slavic language area how to measure it, how to predict it and how to increase it. These mutually intelligible languages will make you do a double. In this slavic languages comparison video, we do polish vs. The mutual intelligibility of l2 speech studies in second.
Crc 1102 project c4 models for mutual intelligibility march, 2015 1416. Not sure about other languages, but russian and ukranian are very mutually intelligible. Russian has quite poor intelligibility with slovak maybe 15% and basically zero intelligibility with czech. Czech,slovakandpolishandthreesouthslaviclanguagescroatian,sloveneand. Sep 18, 2015 in the present study we tested the level of mutual intelligibility between three west slavic czech, slovak and polish and three south slavic languages croatian, slovene and bulgarian. Mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic languages 63 1. Intelligibility of czech and slovak is around 82%, and varies from 7095% depending on the dialect. Since ive been back in the us, i have had only two opportunities to ever use czech, whereas polish or russian is easy to find speakers of here. It is like a mixture between polish, ukrainian and eastern slovak. Pdf mutual intelligibility of languages in the slavic. Pdf mutual intelligibility between west and south slavic languages. This advantage is exposurerelated and would be completely erased by one evenings worth of conversation, i should think.
Mutual intelligibility in slavic language specific languages. Intelligibility of russian with ukrainian is considerably lower possibly on the order of 70% mostly. Its important to note that mutual intelligibility is highly subjective. Intelligibility problems are mostly on the czech end because they dont bother to learn slovak while many slovaks learn czech. The asymmetric intelligibility between czech and slovak, whereby. Jason needs to get off his lazy ass and help me with the site. Also, there is an article on wikipedia called mutual intelligibility, and it has a nice list of mutually intelligible languages. Having a large body of recognizable vocabulary is a necessary condition for mutual intelligibility, but it is nowhere near sufficient. Degree of mutual intelligibility between indoaryan languages.
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