From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Mutual intelligibility is where the speakers of one language can understand another language because they are alike. This is sometimes (but not always) used to decide whether they are different languages or different dialects .

11-10-2021 · mutually intelligible ( not comparable ) ( linguistics) Of two or more speech varieties, able to be understood by one another's speakers. quotations Usage notes Linguists use the criterion of mutual intelligibility to determine whether the speech of two different groups represents two distinct languages, or two dialects of a single language.

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Mutually intelligible languages or varieties of one language Asymmetric intelligibility List of mutually intelligible languages ... This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Mutual intelligibility, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a …

However, many groups of languages are partly mutually intelligible, i.e. most speakers of one language find it relatively easy to achieve some degree of understanding in the related language(s). Often the languages are genetically related, and they are likely to be similar to each other in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, or other features.

In many cases of diglossia, the two dialects are so divergent that they are distinct languages as defined by linguists: they are not mutually intelligible . Thomas Ricento, an author on language policy and political theory believes that there is always a "socially constructed hierarchy, indexed from low to high."

One criterion, which is often considered to be purely linguistic, is that of mutual intelligibility: two varieties are said to be dialects of the same language if being a speaker of one variety confers sufficient knowledge to understand and be understood by a speaker of the other; otherwise, they are said to be different languages.