Mutual intelligibility refers to the ability of speakers of one language to understand speakers of another language without significant difficulty. It is most common between closely related languages, but not always present. There are different types of mutual intelligibility, including spoken and written, partial and asymmetric. It can also suggest that two languages are dialects of the same language. In some cases, the degree of mutual intelligibility is unknown, such as between Old English and Old Norse.
In linguistics, the term “mutual intelligibility” is a way of referring to a type of relationship between two languages. Languages are mutually intelligible if speakers of one can understand speakers of the other without significant difficulty or study. Mutual intelligibility is most commonly found between languages that are closely related to each other, but closely related languages are not always mutually intelligible.
There are several types of mutual intelligibility. The term most commonly refers to the mutual intelligibility between spoken and written languages. For example, speakers of Czech can understand both spoken and written Slovak with little difficulty, while speakers of Slovak can also understand spoken and written Czech. Languages can be mutually intelligible to a greater or lesser extent. For example, Danish speakers may only partially understand Norwegian and Swedish, while Norwegian speakers usually understand Danish only partially but Swedish to a much greater extent.
In some cases, mutual intelligibility is totally or partially asymmetric. This means that it is easier for speakers of one language to understand the other than for speakers of the second language to understand the first. This is the case of Spanish and Portuguese; Portuguese people generally find it easier to understand Spanish than Spaniards find it easier to understand Portuguese. This difficulty stems largely from differences in pronunciation. The two languages are much easier for non-native speakers to understand in writing.
Some languages are mutually intelligible only in their spoken or written forms. For example, since Yiddish comes from German, German speakers and Yiddish speakers can often understand each other. German is written in the Latin script, however, while Yiddish is written in the Hebrew script, meaning the two languages are not mutually intelligible in their written forms. In contrast, Icelandic and Faroese are mutually intelligible mainly in their written forms, as written Faroese is derived from Icelandic. Large differences in pronunciation interfere with the mutual intelligibility of spoken languages.
In some cases, mutual intelligibility can suggest that two languages are actually dialects of the same language. This is the case in much of the former Yugoslavia, where different regions have distinct dialects of the Serbo-Croatian language. These languages are almost totally mutually intelligible, but the local desire for distinct ethnic identities results in their identification as different languages. In some cases, the degree of mutual intelligibility is impossible to ascertain, usually in the case of languages with no living speakers. For example, historians and historical linguists debate the extent to which speakers of Old English and Old Norse, neither of which have a living linguistic community, could understand each other.
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